


Alibi

by Myaibou



Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Canon Gay Character, Friendship, Gay Rights, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-27
Updated: 2013-05-26
Packaged: 2017-12-13 02:20:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 32,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/818830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Myaibou/pseuds/Myaibou
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He was Dash Baxter. Football star. King of Casper High. The world was supposed to have been his oyster for at least another decade. So how did he end up in the basement lab of FentonWorks working for the dad of the kid he used to beat up in high school? And how far would he stick his neck out to protect that kid and whatever secret he was hiding from the government?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Karma's a Bitch

**Author's Note:**

> **Disclaimer:** Butch Hartman created Danny and friends, Nickelodeon owns them. I don’t even get a little of the credit. Or the money, sadly.
> 
>  **Rating:** Teen and Up for occasional language
> 
>  **Warnings, pairings, and spoilers:** Post-canon. Canon character depicted as gay. DxS, TxV, Jazz x OC, but no romance or slash.
> 
> This story fits into the events from my fic _Ghosts in the Closet_. It’s a stand-alone, but it basically follows about six months after chapter eight, “Dash,” foreshadows the events of _Closet_ , touches on the same themes, that sort of thing. Kind of like a companion story that fleshes out Dash’s character arc a little bit. It also refers to events from chapters 20, 21, and 27, “Thicker Than Water, Parts I and II” and “The Ring, Part II,” so spoilers for that, if spoilers for another fic count as a “warning.”
> 
> Another important thing to know for this story is that Danny’s identity is not common knowledge. Since there was no media present when he revealed himself in **Phantom Planet** , there’s nothing to say the people who were there didn’t agree to keep it to themselves. Think _Spider-Man 2_ train scene.
> 
>  **Acknowledgments:** As always, I couldn’t do this without my fabulous beta testers, Dragondancer5150 and Lunnaei. Well, I could, but it would have a lot less readable. You ladies rock!

_How did I get here?_

It wasn’t the first time in the past six months he’d asked himself that question. He was, after all, _Dash Baxter_. Football star. King of Casper High. The world was supposed to have been his oyster for at least another decade. Quarterback at Notre Dame. First—or at _worst_ , second—round draft pick in the NFL. Money, fame, maybe a high-end athletic shoe named after him.

So how did he end up in the basement lab of FentonWorks helping its proprietor do maintenance work on a spaceship-looking vehicle he’d invented for flying through the Ghost Zone?

It was a rhetorical question, of course. He knew exactly how. Red-shirted his entire freshman year at Notre Dame until the very last game of the season against USC, and his entire career, his entire _future_ , was over with one sack that tore through his Medial Meniscus and the ACL and MCL ligaments in his right knee—the dreaded “terrible triad”—and that was that. Notre Dame opted not to give him a medical exemption, and it was buh-bye, scholarship. Buh-bye, NFL. Buh-bye, Nike Dash shoes.

Didn’t help matters that he’d picked that exact point in his life, when he was reevaluating his entire plan for the future, to come out. Dash Baxter, gay. _So_ not part of the Notre-Dame-NFL-Nike-Shoes plan, but since that was dust anyway, what the hell was the point of hiding it anymore?

Well, his old man kicking him out, for one, which pretty much ended any chance of college funds from that quarter. Although truth was, with the A Plan pretty much his _only_ plan, there wasn’t much point to staying in college, either.

And so he’d ended up... here. Gay security guard for a ghost-hunting lab and all-around gofer to the nut job dad of the kid he used to beat up in high school _because_ he lived in a ghost-hunting lab and had a nut job dad. Couldn’t get further away from Notre Dame and the NFL if he’d been abducted by aliens and transported to another galaxy. Hell, that would have once seemed _more_ likely to him than... _this_.

“Hello? You in there, Dashster?”

He blinked. “Oh, yeah. Sorry Mr. F. What did you need?”

His boss gave him a searching look. “You know, you didn’t have to work late tonight. I coulda got Danny to help me out when he got home. Or Jazz’s boyfriend. He’s not so bad with the mechanical stuff.”

Dash arched his eyebrow. “Uh, sure, if by ‘not so bad’ you mean he’s a freakin’ mechanical engineering genius.”

Mr. Fenton waved away the correction. “He can hold his own with a tool box. The point is, you didn’t have to stay late. You must have something better to do on a Saturday night?” 

For a usually oblivious, absent-minded professor type, the guy did have his moments where he was pretty perceptive. Affecting the casual air that had kept him top of the A-List in high school, Dash brushed away his boss’s concern. “Nah. Nothing much for me to do tonight.”

It wasn’t a lie, not really. Sure, Kwan was having his huge end-of-summer blowout bash tonight, the party-to-end-all-parties (until next year, at least), and sure, he’d been invited. But the thought of going didn’t much appeal to him. Kwan was still his best bud, and there were a few people who’d be there, like Paulina, and maybe Brendon or Chris, who weren’t complete homophobic douches, but even the ones who weren’t didn’t have a lot of use for a washed-up ex quarterback, not when they still had their scholarships and their careers and their athletic shoe sponsorships ahead of them. 

Besides, he couldn’t think of anything more depressing than listening to his old high school gang talking about getting ready for their junior year of college, or pre-season training camp, or any of the other things that made him feel more acutely the loss of the life he was supposed to have had.

Mr. Fenton tilted his head, considering Dash’s answer. “You coulda gone out with Danny and his friends. I know he asked you to join them.”

Dash winced. Fenton had turned out to be a sorta cool dude, and they’d managed to strike up something of a friendship in the six months or so since Dash had started working for his parents. Which said a lot more about Fenton than it did about him, considering how he had always made the guy a special target back in high school. But Fenton had turned out to be pretty forgiving—more forgiving than Dash probably could have managed if the situation had been reversed. Hell, they’d even gotten to the point where he could mangle his name at every opportunity, calling him _Fen-toenail_ or _Fen-toid_ or whatever else popped into his head at the moment, just like he used to, only as sort of friendly banter instead of the taunts they once were.

But Fenton and his BFFs Sam Manson, Tucker Foley, and Valerie Gray were pretty tight and, in some ways, even more cliquish than the high school A-List used to be. While it was true he’d invited Dash to hang with them at the Nasty Burger for their own good-bye to summer before the four of them headed back to Purdue Calumet next week, there was just something about hanging with them that made Dash feel like he was always the odd man out. 

Not because of any lingering resentment from high school. At least, he didn’t think that was it. It was more like... like they knew something Dash didn’t. Some special secret to which Dash wasn’t privy. Probably had something to do with the ghost-fighting, or with Danny Phantom, who seemed to have some sort of connection to FentonWorks and, sometimes it seemed, to Fenton and his friends in particular. But it went deeper than just that, and every time Dash was with them, no matter how nice they were, no matter how well he felt like he was getting along with them, he still felt like an outsider. 

How was _that_ for irony? _Him_ , an outsider from a group he’d once considered some of the biggest losers of Casper High. Manson would probably say karma’s a bitch, and she was probably right, but Dash Baxter was nobody’s tag-along or pity invite.

He again adopted his breezy, A-list-star-quarterback air. “Eh, you know how the four of them are, all couple-y and junk. You need an insulin shot for all those puppy dog eyes between the lot of ’em.” That was stretching it a bit. Neither Manson nor Valerie were much the hearts-and-flowers types and were as likely to kill their boyfriends as kiss them if they tried too much PDA, but it worked as an explanation for Mr. F.

“I thought you had a...” Mr. Fenton wrinkled his nose in confusion. “... what do you guys call it, anyway? A boyfriend? Partner?”  
  
Dash bit back a grin. The guy was blunt and clueless, but it was an honest clueless. There was no malice or judgment behind his lack of knowledge about gay relationships and what terminology to use. For not the first time, Dash wished his own dad were more like Mr. F. “Boyfriend’ll work. And no, I don’t. I was dating someone for a while, but it wasn’t too serious, and we broke up a couple weeks ago.”

“Oh, sorry to hear that.”  


Dash shrugged. “No big. Like I said, it wasn’t too serious.”

Nodding, Mr. Fenton reached for a wrench out of his tool kit. “Well, I appreciate the help getting the Speeder ship-shape, but I didn’t want you to feel like you had to work late.”

“No problem. And the overtime doesn’t hurt.”

Mr. Fenton wrinkled his nose. “Doesn’t hurt _you_ , maybe...”   


Dash ignored the complaint. Although Mr. Fenton would occasionally gripe about overtime—and every other expense that went along with having a full-time employee, since FentonWorks had always been just him and Mrs. Fenton until they hired Dash back in January—he knew the Fentons both liked having him around as much as he was willing to be there. Ghosts were a hot-button political issue, and it was a presidential election year, so Mr. and Mrs. Fenton were both pretty twitchy—

A pounding from upstairs caused Mr. Fenton to jump and drop his wrench. Frowning, he looked up toward the ceiling of the lab outside the Speeder. “Is that the front door? Who would be coming by at this hour?” He looked at a clock on the wall. “Almost ten o’clock. Maddie and the girls should be getting home about now. Maybe her house key got separated from the car keys?”

The pounding continued, more insistent, and Mr. Fenton heaved his massive bulk out of the Speeder and headed toward an intercom system built into the wall of the lab. Thumbing the TALK button, he spoke into the speaker. “That you, sweet cheeks? You lose the house key?”  


He released the TALK button, and the speaker crackled. “Jack Fenton? Federal agents. Open up.”

His entire body stiffened, and Dash was reminded sometimes there was a _reason_ the Fentons were twitchy. Hopping out of the vehicle’s side hatch, he asked his boss, “You want me to get rid of ’em?”

Mr. F. pursed his lips, considering a moment, before shaking his head. “No, I’ve got this.” He pressed the TALK button again. “What do you want?”

“We need to talk to you and your family.”

He bristled at the mention of his family. “What about?”

“Fenton, open up, or we’re coming in. _Now_.”

“Hold your horses. I’m down in the basement. Give me a minute to get upstairs.”

“You’ve got _half_ a minute.”

His jaw tightened and he almost seemed to forget Dash was there as he began muttering to himself. “Damned anti-ghost Gestapo. Why can’t they leave my family the hell alone?”

“You want me to go up there with you, Mr. F.? Stare ’em down, make sure they don’t cross the line?”

“They _always_ cross the line. It’s what they do.” He narrowed his eyes. “No. It’s better if they don’t know you’re here. See if you can get a hold of Maddie, give her a heads up. Danny, too... although I’m not expecting him before midnight. He and his friends always stay out late. Better to find out what’s going on before you call him. If I bring them into the kitchen, you can listen in at the stairs, assess the situation. Once you know what they want, you can call Danny.”

Dash nodded, suddenly glad his minor bout of depression had kept him at work instead of going off to Kwan’s party. Because if there was one thing he understood about his job, it’s that this was exactly what he’d been hired for. Not the stuff in his official job description, which was a lot of blather about lab security, protection of intellectual property, and other such mundane corporate concerns that the Fentons actually didn’t seem to care about all that much. 

No, this was his _real_ job, the job behind the one they put down on paper, the one no one had ever spelled out, but he’d picked up on pretty early in the game, reading the signals the way he used to read an opposing team’s defense and adjust his plays accordingly, and it pretty much boiled down to one thing: keep the grunts from the government’s ghost-hunting agency, known around these parts as the Guys in White, away from Danny Fenton. 

He didn’t know why, and he didn’t care. Well, okay, he sorta did care. It was weird, this thing with the feds and Fenton. Weird because it didn’t extend to his older sister, Jazz, but it did extend to his cousin, Danielle, the two tons of sass packed into a hundred-and-twenty pounds of girl who had started living with the family sometime around Dash’s and Fenton’s senior year of high school. Sure, she had some health problems, something that knocked the wind out of her sails every so often, but that didn’t explain her guardians’ issue with the feds.

Weird, too, because they weren’t the only ones who got nervous whenever the feds were around. Jazz, Foley, Manson, even Valerie—they all seemed to close ranks around Fenton and his cousin around the Guys in White. Not enough that they noticed, brain trusts that they were, but enough for Dash to figure out pretty quick that that was the real reason he’d been hired, to somehow be a wall of muscle between them and Fenton.

And most of all, it was weird because it was the only thing that _did_ seem to worry his folks. They lived in a house with a freakin’ ghost portal, for cryin’ out loud, but that didn’t bother them at all. Hell, the old man took an almost creepy delight in sending his son, daughter, cousin-slash-ward, and any and all of their friends out chasing after ghosts with nothing more than some jury-rigged ecto-whatsits that he’d cooked up days before and had only half tested. 

But let the feds show up, and it was Threat Level Red around FentonWorks.

It wasn’t Dash’s job to care why, though. He wasn’t the quarterback anymore, the guy with the radio in his helmet who got all the instructions direct from the coach and knew the reasoning behind every play and why and when it should be called. Fenton was the quarterback now. Which sorta made sense, since he was the one who was probably going to inherit this whole crazy lab—lock, stock, and ghost portal. And sometimes he seemed to really _get_ ghosts in a way even his folks didn’t. 

So, Fenton was the quarterback of Team FentonWorks, and his dad was the coach, which made Dash the guard, now. Maybe the offensive tackle, depending on the day. But either way, it was his job to protect the quarterback, period. Not to ask questions about why _this_ particular quarterback seemed to be a more special snowflake regarding _that_ particular white-suited defensive line. No. It was do his job, guard the quarterback, and don’t ask questions. 

And that’s exactly what he intended to do.

 


	2. Scoping Out the Opposition

Dash had no luck getting a hold of Mrs. Fenton, Jazz, or Danielle—all three of their phones went straight to voice mail. He didn’t bother leaving a message. Instead, he arranged himself two steps down from the top of the basement stairs, where he could look through the sliver of an opening Mr. Fenton had left in the door behind him. It wasn’t much of a vantage point, but if he moved a little to his left or his right, he could see most of the kitchen in bits and pieces, so it would have to do. If he opened the door any wider, the Guys in White would catch him spying on them.

The Guys in White. Just thinking about them made him want to pound something. Everyone in Amity Park knew they were complete douchebags. Instead of doing anything constructive about the ghosts that were actually causing problems in town, they spent most of their time harassing Danny Phantom, the one ghost that was on their side, who’d even saved the _world_ a few years back. But did they care about that? No. 

Hell, just last November, they’d arrested him for the terrible crime of _existing_. Luckily, he’d managed to escape, but the whole incident, which even made the national headlines, pretty much sealed the Guys in White as the lowest of the low in the minds of most Amity Park residents. As far as Dash was concerned, hating Phantom because he was a ghost was no different than those so-called high school buddies of his dumping him as soon as they’d found out he was gay.

And now those ectophobe bastards were bugging his boss. He could hear their voices as they came toward the kitchen. “So what is this all about anyway?” That was Mr. Fenton.

They walked into Dash’s limited view through the crack in the door, Mr. F. first, followed by two men dressed in the pristine white suits which gave them their nickname. As usual, they were sporting dark shades even though it was nighttime. Both were big guys—not defensive tackle big, more like outside linebacker big—and were shaven clean as billiard balls. They could have been identical twins, except for the fact that one of them was black and the other was white. 

Dash recognized them immediately—O. and K., they called themselves. They, more than any of the other Guys in White, seemed to take a special delight in tormenting the Fentons.

“We’ll ask the questions,” the black guy said. K., Dash remembered, because it was the opposite of that movie, _Men in Black,_ where K. was the white guy. “Now, have you been home all night?”

“Sure. I was working on my speeder. Why?”

The white guy, O., took his turn. “Alone? Where’s the rest of your family?”  
  
Mr. F. shifted his weight, uneasy at the question about his family. “My wife, daughter, and cousin are in Canterville at some Women of Science thing. My son is out with his friends. Now, would you mind telling me what this is about?”  
  
“And you were here all night?” O.’s voice was heavy with skepticism.

His partner, however, didn’t seem to share it. “Don’t be stupid. Look at him! He’s too fat to be the one we’re looking for.”

Alarm bells went off in Dash’s head. _Why are they looking for one of the Fentons?_

Mr. Fenton also looked alarmed, enough so that he didn’t seem to notice the fat dig. “What is this about?” he repeated.

Before the Guys in White could remind him again that they would be the ones asking the questions, there was a clattering at the back door, and women’s voices. 

Dash tensed—Mrs. Fenton, Jazz, and Danielle were home. That could be either good or bad. Good because Mrs. F. and Jazz were collectively the brains of the operation and would probably handle the feds better than Mr. F. Bad because Danielle was the other one besides Fenton they didn’t like the Guys in White to be around. Dash shifted position so he had a view of the hall that led to the back door.

“—Doctor Blackwell’s point about applying Title Nine compliance to STEM disciplines was—” Mrs. Fenton was first to appear, and she stopped short, her whole body stiffening, just like Mr. F.’s had when the Guys in White first arrived. Like a soccer mom doing a hard brake in her minivan, she stuck her arm out, blocking Jazz and Danielle from entering the room behind her. “What’s going on here? Jack?” 

“We’ll ask the questions.” That sounded like O. “Where were you ladies tonight?”

“At a Women of Science symposium at Crane College in Canterville, why?” Mrs. Fenton crossed her arms, taking a slight step to her right to put herself between the feds and the other two girls.

Dash couldn’t help but grin. _Nice move, Mrs. F. You’da made a good center. For a girl._

“All three of you?” K. sounded less than impressed. “When did you leave?”  
  
Pressing her lips together, Mrs. Fenton seemed to consider her options before answering. “The last seminar ended at nine. We stopped to speak to one of the lecturers, Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, for maybe half an hour, so nine-thirty-ish?”

“And you drove straight home?” O. asked.

“No, we _flew_ ,” Danielle snarked back from behind Mrs. Fenton, who turned around and shushed her.

The Guys in White ignored her, K. talking to his partner instead. “Canterville’s about half an hour away. They wouldn’t have time for much else. Although we will be checking your story.” That last bit was obviously directed back at Mrs. Fenton, with more than a note of warning in his voice.

“It’s gotta be the boy, then.” O. sounded excited. “Everyone else has an alibi.”

K. addressed Mrs. Fenton again. “Do you know where your son is?”

“What do you want with Danny?” That was Jazz.  


Mr. Fenton stepped into Dash’s narrow field of vision to stand beside his wife. “I already told you, he’s out with friends.”

“When’s he due back?”

“How should I know? He’s twenty years old! He doesn’t check in with us every time he goes out! We could barely get him to do that when he was in high school!”

“Wait, wait, wait.” Mrs. Fenton put her hand on her husband’s shoulder to stop him—and everyone else—from saying anything more. “Why are you asking all these questions? What exactly do we need alibis _for_?”

There was a pause, but when it was clear from the look on her face that Mrs. Fenton wasn’t going to let anyone answer any more questions until she knew what was going on, O. finally came clean. “There was an altercation down on the docks tonight involving several ghosts, the Ghost Hunter Girl, and two unidentified human accomplices. We managed to eliminate one ghost—”

Dash had to bite his lip to keep from gasping, and all four Fentons stiffened in alarm, obviously thinking the same thing he was. It was Danielle who voiced the question for them all. “ _What_ ghost?”

“Does it matter? A ghost is a ghost is a ghost.” The shrug in O.’s voice made Dash want to come out from hiding to flatten the guy, but he restrained himself. The very fact that these dickwads didn’t care which ghost it was meant it probably wasn’t the one they were all afraid it was. Because if they’d have caught _him_ , they’d be crowing about it from the rooftops, the bastards.

Mrs. Fenton seemed to come to the same conclusion. Seething with anger, but regaining her composure, she snapped back at them. “No, they’re not. Parabiologically speaking, there is a vast array of different kinds of ectoplasmic entities, some sentient and some not, some malevolent, some benign—”

K. snorted. “Yeah, right. A _friendly_ ghost. You’ve been watching too many cartoons, lady.”

“That’s _Doctor_ Fenton. I’m a _scientist_. I form conclusions based on empirical evidence, not my own prejudices. Anymore.” The last word was mumbled more than spoken, to the point where Dash almost didn’t catch it before she shook it off and was staring down the feds again. “So as a scientist who has made a nearly lifelong study of ectoplasmic beings, I ask again, what kind of ghost did you...?” She faltered, like she couldn’t quite bring herself to complete the sentence.

There was a pause before O. answered. “Humanoid, looked like some kind of vagabond. Raggedy coat, scruffy beard, gloves with holes in ’em, that sort of thing. He was trying to set up shop in some shipping containers down at the docks.”  


The relief among the Fentons was palpable, and Dash let out his own breath. Definitely not Phantom, then. Although if the Ghost Hunter Girl was there, then Phantom probably was, too. Rumor was they were an item. The question was, who were the two humans? The feds obviously thought one of them was Fenton, but he was supposed to be with his girlfriend, Foley, and Valerie. If it was Fenton, why only one other human? And which one of them was it? Maybe he should text him...

“You look relieved. Is there a specific ghost you’re worried about?”

K.’s question, laden with another thinly-veiled threat, brought Dash’s attention back to the kitchen. Now it was Mr. Fenton’s turn to look pissed. Ignoring the question, he turned it back on them. “Isn’t... _eliminating_ a sentient being a little extreme for haunting a few shipping containers?”

“Who said he was sentient?”  


Jazz fielded this one. “Humanoid, wearing clothes, ‘setting up shop’? Sounds sentient to me.”

O. clucked his tongue. “See, that’s exactly the kind of reaction that gives us reason to believe your family is involved in aiding and abetting the ecto infestation that plagues this town. That and the fact that you still haven’t adequately accounted for all your whereabouts when several humans helped that Phantom punk escape our custody last November.”

It was like stadium lights coming to life in Dash’s brain. The Fentons’ twitchiness around the feds. Their protectiveness of Danny and his younger cousin. Dash getting hired on a mere two months later...

Fenton was _there_ that night. He’d actually helped Phantom escape. Probably Danielle, too, judging by the way everyone protected her. What about his friends? Manson was the big ghosts’ rights activist. If Fenton was there, no doubt she was there, too. And wherever they went, Foley wasn’t far behind.

 _Holy crap. Fenton and his friends are_ heroes _. They saved the guy who once saved the world..._

Mrs. Fenton was uncowed by O.’s accusation. “You have absolutely no evidence anyone in our family was involved in that, and no evidence that any of us were involved in what happened tonight, so if you do not stop this harassment and the fishing expeditions, I’ll be making a call to our attorney—”

“Oh, this is no fishing expedition.” There was almost glee in K.’s voice. “We do have evidence someone from your family was involved. We found this at the scene. This containment device belongs to you, does it not?”  


Dash had to shift position again so he could see the Guys and White, and he grimaced when he saw what K. was holding. A clear plastic evidence bag holding one of those Fenton Thermos thingies that Mr. F. had invented.

“It’s our patent, yes.” Mrs. Fenton sounded wary. “But they are available to the general public.”

“When we dust for fingerprints, whose do you think we’ll find?”

“I really wouldn’t know. But we do hand-make all our Fenton Thermoses, so there’s a good chance you’ll find all our fingerprints on it, no matter whom it belongs to.”

“Do you really think there are that many people around who use these things? You are the most active civilian ghost hunters in town—”

“Ghost _hunters_ ,” Danielle piped up. “How is that ‘aiding and abetting’?”

“You’ve helped Phantom in the past.”  
  
“Yeah, helped him _fight_ ghosts who are causing _actual_ trouble. He _saves_ people.”

“Danielle, shush.” That was Mrs. F.

O. shook his head. “He’s an illegal spectral entity and a fugitive from justice who tonight was involved in an alteration on the docks with three other ghosts. We eliminated one perp, but the Ghost Hunter Girl and two other human accomplices helped Phantom and the other ghosts get away. If your son was one of those human accomplices, it will go better for him if he just comes clean and gives up Phantom.”

“Gives him up?” Danielle barked out a harsh, guttural laugh, ignoring Mrs. Fenton’s instructions to be quiet. “He’s a _ghost_! He probably just disappeared and went back to the Ghost Zone.” 

“Not this time.” K. gave them a tight smile, and Dash had to squelch another urge to pound his face in. “He took a hit from a new prototype weapon. Didn’t terminate him, like that other ghost, but he went down pretty hard. No way he got very far without a _lot_ of help.”


	3. Calling an Audible

This time, Dash did gasp but, luckily, it couldn’t be heard over the gasps from pretty much all the Fentons. Shifting back to where they were in his line of sight once more, Dash looked for signs that he should do something. Mrs. F. was a shade of pale he’d never seen on a living person before, and Mr. F. had to put out his hand to steady her. Danielle looked like she would’ve flown at the Guys in White and strangled them with her bare hands if it weren’t for the fact that Jazz had a pretty tight grip on her shoulders. Almost a death grip, in fact, like digging into her cousin was the only thing keeping her on her feet.

With a look of raw fury in his eyes that Dash would never in a million years have guessed his giant teddy bear of a boss was capable of, Mr. Fenton glared at the feds. “I want you out of our house. _Now_. We’ll call you when our son returns home, and you can talk to him then.” His voice was low and gravelly, matching the rage in his eyes.

There was some more rustling from the Guys in White, and Dash shifted again to get the enemy back in sight. O. was waving some piece of paper at them. “We have a warrant to search and secure this establishment and to question everyone who lives here, so we’re not going anywhere until we speak to your son.”

K. got an almost gleeful look in his eye as he leaned toward them. “See, here’s the thing. Our new experimental weapon shoots projectiles rather than ectoplasm. They’re coated with a special anti-ecto resin that keeps ghosts from going intangible, so instead of the projectile phasing right through them, it embeds in their ecto-cortex where it not only causes them to lose ectoplasm, weakening or even destroying them, but it also releases a chemical that keeps them tangible and grounded. He’ll be needing—I don’t know, whatever passes for medical attention for ghosts—before he can fly back into the Ghost Zone. And that means he’ll be looking for someone who knows something about ghosts. Parabiologically speaking, _Doctor_ Fenton.”

“Projectile weapon? You mean _bullets_?” Mrs. F. sounded like she could’ve spit nails at them. Dash would have been happy to hold him down for her if she wanted to try. “You shot at ghosts with _bullets_?”

“More like pellets than bullets.”

“What does that even mean? If it was designed to embed in their ecto-cortex, it could be dangerous for humans as well!”

O. shrugged. “I imagine it could do a lot of damage to a human, yes.”

“So, you’re shooting these bullet/pellet weapons in a warehouse with _humans_ present? Who could get hurt in the crossfire?”

“Human _accomplices_.” As if that made it okay.

“Why you little—” Mr. Fenton sounded like he was going to lunge at K., but Mrs. Fenton must’ve held him back, because she spoke next, her voice almost shaking with barely-controlled rage. 

“I’m calling our attorney.”

O. shook his head. “No phone calls until your son returns home. We wouldn’t want you to try and warn him off, now, would we?”

“Warn him off from _what_? I’m sure our son had nothing to do with any of this.” But her voice was thick with worry, like she wanted to climb out of her own skin.  


“Well, we’ll see about that, won’t we?” K. still had that gleeful look as he pulled back one of the kitchen chairs and sat down in it, folding his arms across his chest. “So, we’re all just going to sit down and make ourselves comfortable.” O. mimicked him, pulling out a second chair.

Dash sat back from the basement door. He’d heard enough. Odds were at least even that Fenton was one of the humans who was there at the docks helping Phantom, and if what the feds had said about the thing they’d shot him with was true, then bringing him back here was almost certainly exactly what Fenton or his friends would do if it was them, and then they’d be sunk. Which meant it was time for Dash to call an audible, redirect them to a different play.

Texting was out. If the feds already had a warrant to question Fenton, they probably would be able to confiscate his phone and they’d find out he’d been warned off. A voice call would be better. They’d no doubt check his call log and know Dash had called him, but Dash worked for his dad and was sorta friends with him, so he’d have any number of legitimate reasons to call him and they wouldn’t know what the actual content of the call had been. Plus, they’d never even bothered to check if anyone else was in the house, so they’d have no reason to suspect Dash knew what was happening. 

So, call Fenton. That was the plan. Except he couldn’t do it from the basement, where the feds might hear. Luckily, he’d been working here long enough to know pretty much all the ins and outs of FentonWorks. And the basement had three outs, to be exact: the staircase up into the kitchen, the portal into the Ghost Zone, and...

Dash headed back to the Specter Speeder and ducked inside, taking a moment to scan the dashboard for the correct device amid a whole pilot’s cockpit-worth of dials and buttons. He found it easily enough, an innocuous, gray garage door remote clipped next to the steering yoke. Unclipping it, he aimed it out the side hatch at a bookcase against the wall of the lab, and pressed the button.

Immediately, the bookshelf slid aside, revealing a round opening that looked almost like the ghost portal, only instead of a swirling mass of green ectoplasmic energy, it was just a regular tunnel that led into a small underground garage where Mr. Fenton stored the speeder when he wasn’t working on it in the lab. 

Clipping it to his belt, Dash exited the speeder and went into the garage. On the other side was another tunnel, this one angling upwards—the exit built for getting the speeder into and out of the lab when they wanted to use it in the human world. He thumbed the remote, closing the bookcase door in the lab behind him, then headed up the sloping tunnel out. It was a little steep, since it was designed for a vehicle that could fly and not pedestrians, but it didn’t take long for him to reach the top. Another push of the remote opened a trapdoor under the grass in the Fentons’ back yard and he climbed out through it and closed the door behind him.

Sticking to the shadows as much as possible, he avoided the house and headed for the gate that opened into the alley out back. As soon as he was through the gate, he crouched down in the alley, dug out his cell phone, looked up Fenton’s cell in his contacts, and called him.

It rang several times, to the point when Dash was sure it was going to go to voice mail, when it was finally answered. But instead of Fenton, it was a throaty female voice. “Hello?”

Dash paused, thrown for a second. “Uh... Manson? Is that you?”

“Yeah. Danny’s busy right now. He asked me to answer his phone. What’s up?”

She sounded anxious, like she was trying too hard to sound normal, something that was never a particular goal of hers, and Dash was more convinced than ever he was right, that they were at the docks. “Is he with you?”

“Yeah. He—”

“Tell him not to go home.”

There was a pause. “What?”

“Don’t go home. The feds are there.”

She let out an impressive string of swear words. “What are they _doing_ there?”

“What do _you_ think?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Just don’t go over there unless you’re up for a long conversation with a couple of white suits. Go—” Dash paused, not sure where to suggest they go. If they did have Phantom with them and he was hurt, they’d need someplace private to do a quick patch-up while they came up with an alibi for Fenton and Manson. Her house was a bad idea—that’s the first place anyone looking for Fenton would look after his own house. Ditto Foley’s house. They needed someplace out of the way, someplace they didn’t usually go... “My place. Go to my place. It’s a basement apartment, outside entrance behind the building. No one’s likely to see you. You know where it is?”

There was a pause, probably while she discussed the situation with Fenton and maybe Phantom. Then she was back on the line. “Yeah. We’re actually just around the corner from there.” Again, the lack of argument that this was a necessary plan confirmed Dash’s suspicious that they’d been at the docks. 

“Okay. Go there. I’ll be there in five and fill you in.” He ended the call before anyone could walk by or the feds could decide to take a look outside. Then, ducking out of the alley and onto Maple Street, which ran alongside the Fentons’ corner lot, he turned left, heading away from the house, then made another left on Twelfth, the block behind FentonWorks and the street where he lived, and headed toward his apartment at a jog.

It didn’t take him long to get there. He only lived about five blocks away from FentonWorks, in a three-story brownstone that had been converted into seven separate apartments, two on each floor, and one in the basement. The basement apartment had an outside entrance accessed from the back yard, down a flight of concrete steps that were next to the back door of the main building. 

When he got there, Fenton and Manson were already there—along with Foley and Valerie, which was kind of a surprise, since the Guys in White had mentioned only two humans—sitting huddled together on the bottom steps outside his door. Phantom, however, was nowhere in sight.

Dash frowned, hoping the ghost’s absence meant the feds had gotten it wrong, that he wasn’t that hurt, and he’d gotten away on his own. Or that they’d found someplace better than FentonWorks to get him help. ’Cause if they’d just left him behind...

Manson saw him first as he came down the stairs. “Dash! What the _hell_ is going on?”

“The Guys in White showed up at FentonWorks asking a lot of questions about where everyone was tonight.” 

Fenton, squeezed between his girlfriend and Foley, looked up at him. “Danielle—”

Foley shook his head. “Dude. They’re not looking for her. It’s _you_ we’re worried about.”

“Which Guys in White?” Manson asked. “Did you recognize them?”  
  
“Yeah. It was O. and K., the guys who usually like to bug the Fentons.” Dash brushed past them to get to the door, pulling his keys out of his jacket pocket as he did so. “And Foley’s right. They’re looking for Fen-toady. Everyone else in the family has an alibi for tonight. They said there was some trouble down at the docks. A couple of ghosts, that Ghost Hunter girl, and a couple of human ‘accomplices.’ They found one of your dad’s thermos thingies, so they figure someone in your family was one of the humans. And since everyone else has an alibi, they want to question you. They’re basically staking out your place until you come home. They won’t even let your folks call their lawyer.”

Manson swore again. “Now what do we do? We’ve gotta get you _home_. How do we do that without them arresting you?”

“Nah, they won’t arrest him.” Dash fiddled with the keys in his lock, which was always a little sticky. “They just wanna question him. They’re looking for Danny Phantom. They kinda thought he’d be with you.” He looked over his shoulder at them. “Where is he, anyway? Is he okay? The feds said they shot him and some other ghost with some new kind of weapon. Said they wasted the other ghost and hurt Phantom pretty bad. Something about anti-ghost bullets or pellets or something? What was that all about?”

Fenton groaned. “They told my _parents—_?”

“Danny, shh,” Manson quieted him. “Don’t talk.”

“I have to call—”

“With the _feds_ there? Have you lost your _mind_?” 

“But... they must be _freaking—_ ”

Valerie put a hand on his back. “They’ll cope. Let’s focus on you.”

Dash narrowed his eyes, scanning the four of them. Something wasn’t right. “What happened to Phantom?”

“Uh...” Foley exchanged glances with Manson. “He’s fine. Don’t worry about him.”

“So, they didn’t shoot him?”

“Oh, they were definitely shooting. With bullets, like they said.”

Frowning, Dash scanned the four of them, trying to figure out what was going on between them, something other than the obvious. Then, he saw it, a dark stain all over Foley’s shirt. Only.... it wasn’t just Foley’s shirt. All four of them were covered in it.

His eyes widened. It was _blood_. Blood mixed with a few smears of green ectoplasm. But mostly blood. A _lot_ of it. And the worst of it was on Fenton. 

And that was when Dash noticed how pale Fenton was. And that he wasn’t just squeezed between Manson and Foley, he was _leaning_ on them. Heavily. Like he’d fall over without them supporting him.

Dash hissed out a breath of air between his teeth. “ _You_? They shot _you,_ Fenton?”


	4. Sacked

“Uh, Dash? Maybe we should go inside?”

Dash wrenched his eyes from Fenton and all that _blood_ to Valerie, who was giving him a pointed look. “What? Oh, right! Yeah, let’s get him inside, clean him up.”

He stepped into his apartment, holding the door open as wide as he could so Manson and Foley, with Fenton slung between them, could get through. They got him over to Dash’s ratty couch—for once Dash was glad he was broke and couldn’t afford the kind of nice furniture he grew up with—and eased Fenton down onto it.

“We should check the dressing. It’s probably soaked through by now.” Manson knelt down beside the couch, shrugging out of the fuzzy, purple, spider-shaped backpack she’d had since high school. She dug through it, pulling out stuff and laying it on the coffee table behind her—two different cell phones, a green hair scrunchie, something that looked like one of Mr. Fenton’s ecto-weapons—until she found what she was looking for: a rather impressive first aid kit. But when she opened it, she grunted in annoyance. “We used all the packing gauze.” She looked over her shoulder at Dash. “Do you have any first aid stuff?”

Once again, Dash was jolted out of his shock. “Yeah, in the bathroom. I’ll get it for you.” Closing the front door behind him, he slid the deadbolt and the chain lock into place, then hurried to the bathroom to grab his first aid kit from under the sink. Years of playing football had taught him to keep a well-stocked first aid kit, and recovering from knee surgery had left him with a lot of leftovers: bandages, antiseptic, splints, ice packs. He grabbed as much gauze and tape as he could find, along with a bottle of hydrogen peroxide, and brought it all back to the living room, where Manson already had Fenton’s shirt off and was checking the dressing on his right shoulder.

His shoulder. Dash hadn’t even realized until that moment he hadn’t known where Fenton had been shot. The shoulder was good, as bullet wounds go, right? No vital organs or anything like that. It looked like it was toward the outside, in his deltoid, which was a lot more well-defined than Dash remembered from back in high school. He wasn’t football-ripped, but he’d clearly been working out. That was good, right? If the bullet stayed in his delt, it would be away from bones and arteries and junk like that.

But there was a _lot_ of blood. A dressing already on his shoulder was pretty red, with a lot of green smears, too. Ectoplasm? Why would there be ectoplasm if the feds were using bullets? Did he get caught in crossfire from the ghosts, too?

Manson looked up at him. “You got some more gauze packs?”

He nodded, dropping the bundle beside her. “You need to get that old dressing off?”

“No, that’ll just make the bleeding worse. I’m gonna add more on top of it.”

Dash blinked again. “You know a lot about this stuff. I thought you wanted to be a lawyer, not a doctor.”

She snorted, but it was Foley who answered. “Years of ghost fighting. Knowing a lot of first aid comes with the territory.”

Manson opened one of the gauze packs and pushed it down, hard, on Fenton’s shoulder, and he grunted in pain.

Dash winced in sympathy. “That’s gotta hurt like a _mother_. I’ve got some Oxycodone leftover from my knee surgery. You want some?”

He shook his head, gritting his teeth as his girlfriend pressed the fresh gauze on his shoulder. “No. I don’t want to be any more out of it than the blood loss is already doing. Gotta figure out what to do.”

“Leave that to us, and lie still. Tucker, grab that roll of tape and get this dressing taped down. Valerie, see if you can clean up some of the blood with that peroxide.”

They followed her instructions, a well-oiled team, while Dash watched, still trying to wrap his mind around what he was seeing. Fenton, _shot_. Not Phantom, but _Fenton_. Exactly the sort of thing he’d been hired on to prevent. He was the offensive guard and, somehow, the quarterback had gotten sacked while he wasn’t looking.

Shaking it off, he found his voice. “How did this happen? They said they shot _Phantom_.” And then a thought occurred to him, and he sucked in another breath. “Jesus, Fenton. Did you take a _bullet_ for him?”

He grunted as Foley taped down the gauze while Manson held it tight against his shoulder. “No. Gonna... shoot... baby...”

“ _What?_ There was a _baby_ there?”

“Not a human baby,” Valerie corrected him. “A ghost baby.”

“Doesn’t... matter. Still... a baby. Shooting... at a baby. Killed... that other ghost.”

His girlfriend gave him a dark look. “Danny, stop talking. You need to save your energy.”

Putting the cap back on the peroxide, Valerie inspected her work. “I think we should get a wash cloth, wipe him down a bit. Where’s your bathroom, Dash?”

He pointed toward the little hallway between his bedroom and bathroom, where he’d just come from. “The door on the left. There’s a little linen cupboard over the toilet. Wash cloths are in there.”

She nodded, then got up and headed for the bathroom, while Dash questioned the others. “I don’t get it. What the hell _happened_?”

Foley explained. “You ever heard of the Box Ghost?” Dash nodded. “Well, he’s got a kid. A toddler, Box Lunch. She’s, like, three.”

“Ghosts can have kids?”

“Apparently. And you do _not_ want to know who the mother is.” Foley shuddered. “But anyway, the Box Ghost likes to hang out at the docks with all the shipping boxes and junk, and maybe it was Take Your Daughter to Work Day in the Ghost Zone or something, because he had Box Lunch with him. But he must’ve run across this other ghost, one we’d never seen before. He looked like a homeless guy or something.”

Manson let out a huff of irritation. “Probably died on the docks because he lost his job thanks to the Wall Street crash and ‘trickle-down’ economics—”

“One cause at a time, Sam.” Foley rolled his eyes before continuing the story. “So, maybe homeless-guy ghost used to hang out on the docks or something, because he was trying to haunt one of those shipping containers. Only, the Box Ghost thinks all boxes of any sort are his territory, so they got into a little turf war. Minor stuff, busted up some packages in a warehouse and junk. Nothing that required heavy artillery.”

“So, how did you guys and Phantom and the Ghost Hunter all end up at the docks?”

“We patrol sometimes. Guess Phantom and the Hunter were out patrolling, too, and we all ran across the Box Ghost and the homeless-guy ghost having their little turf war. Phantom was just gonna suck ’em up in a thermos and dump them back in the Ghost Zone, when all of a sudden the Guys in White show up, and they start shooting the place up with actual guns. With _bullets_. I mean, who goes after ghosts with _bullets_?”

Manson got a dark look on her face—well, darker than usual—as she finished with Fenton’s dressing.

“So, we all duck for cover, and they hit the homeless-guy ghost, right in the gut. One shot, and he was done, so obviously the bullets weren’t regular bullets. They were made for destroying ghosts.”

Dash nodded. “That’s what they said, back at FentonWorks. Said they were using some new weapon that shot special bullets or pellets or something that would keep ghosts from going intangible or flying. That way, it wouldn’t phase through them, and they’d bleed ectoplasm and wouldn’t be able to fly away or anything. That’s why they thought Phantom would be with you, that he’d need help, and that you’d probably take him to Mrs. Fenton.”

Foley scowled. “They weren’t too far off on that one. But anyway, bullets, pellets, whatever—they could hurt us, too, so we’re just trying to stay low and get out of their way. But then, they aimed at the baby, Box Lunch. She was just sitting in the corner in this little seat the Box Ghost had made out of a box. He couldn’t get to her, so Danny flew down—”

“Flew?” Dash frowned, confused, then nodded as he realized. “Oh, you mean Phantom, not Fenton.”

“Uh... yeah, right. Danny Phantom flew down to protect her—”

“And Fenton took the hit to protect _him_.” Dash whistled as he looked down at injured man on his couch, seeing him in a whole new light. “In case I didn’t tell you before how bad I feel for all the times I gave you crap in high school, I’m telling you now. You are a bona fide hero. You saved Phantom _and_ some kid ghost.”

“She’s _three,_ ” Fenton repeated, his expression as dark as Manson’s.

“So what happened after that? How’d you get away?”

Foley continued the story. “Well, after they shot Danny, we knew we had to get out of there, so we dumped a bunch of crates of tomatoes on top of the Guys in White and bugged out while they were digging themselves free. We couldn’t get very far, though, with Danny hurt and bleeding, so we stopped so Sam could put pressure on the wound to stop the bleeding, and Phantom made us all invisible and used his cold powers to mask our body heat so their equipment wouldn’t detect us. Then, we just waited until they gave up looking and left.”

“Wait. Why didn’t Phantom help you get home after that? Where’d he go?”

“Uh...” Foley glanced at Manson, and she took up the story.

“He got nicked, too. Not badly, but enough that he couldn’t help us any more than that.”

 Dash’s eyes widened. “So, he did get hurt after all. You sure he’s okay?”

Valerie returned with damp washcloth, and she sat on the arm of the couch by Fenton’s head to wipe his face with it. Foley glanced from her to Dash and told him, “Oh, I think it’s safe to say that the Ghost Hunter Girl is taking care of him even as we speak.”

 For some reason, that remark earned him a smack in the arm from Valerie, while Fenton seemed to find it funny. “Points for creative... use of the truth.”

Manson shot death glares at them. “Danny! I swear to God, if you don’t stop talking, I’m going to kill you myself. And Tucker, you are _not helping_.”

Ignoring yet another in-joke among the four friends, Dash tried to put the final pieces of the puzzle together. “So, they looked for a while, didn’t find you because Phantom was helping hide you, but they did find one of Mr. Fenton’s thermoses, and they went to FentonWorks, figuring someone in the family had been there.”

Fenton braved his girlfriend’s wrath to ask, “About that. What... happened? My family—”

“They’re fine. Worried, but fine.” And Dash told them how the Guys in White had showed up and Mr. Fenton had told him to listen in from the basement so that they wouldn’t know he was there, and how he snuck out through the tunnel to the back yard as soon as he knew what they wanted.

“So they don’t know there was anyone to warn us.” Manson looked thoughtful a moment, then shook her head. “But it does us no good if they’re staking out the house and have his family trapped. We’ve got to get him to his mom so she can get that bullet out of his arm, but no way we’re getting him past the Guys in White like this.”

“Why didn’t you just call when it first happened and have one of us come and get you?”

Foley shook his head. “They were looking for humans in the area. If we’d have used our cell phones, they would have been able to zero right in on us. We needed to get away from the docks first.”

“We figured we were okay once we got this far out from the lakefront. We were just about to call Danny’s house when you called, Dash.” Manson cocked her head, her face softening. “Thanks for that, by the way. If you hadn’t called us before we called them, they’d have caught us for sure.”

Dash shrugged. “It’s my job.”

She looked back at her boyfriend, worry creasing her brow once more. “So, what do we do now?”

“Sam...” Valerie looked hesitant. “I hate to say it, but maybe we should take him to the hospital.”

“No,” Manson and Fenton said in unison.

“Hospitals are _evil_ ,” Foley added.

“Guys, I know that’s not great for anonymity and all, but he’s got a _bullet_ in him. It needs to come out. Even if we did get him home, his mom’s not a doctor.”

“Close enough. We can’t take him to a hospital, Val. You know they have to report gunshot wounds, and the feds will know—”

“Sam, it’s a _bullet_ doctored up to mess up _ghosts_. There must be all sorts of new and interesting things it’s doing to mess him up.”

Fenton shook his head. “It’s for ghosts... not humans. So long as I’m human... won’t mess me up... any worse.”

Valerie wasn’t buying it. “Maybe, but it’s still something nasty in your arm. Who knows what it’ll do to you if you don’t get it treated professionally?”

Manson took Fenton’s side of the argument. “Nothing nearly as bad as what the Guys in White will do if they arrest him!”

“I know it’s a risk—”

“A risk? It’s more than a risk, and you know it!”

“But so’s a bullet wound! It has to be removed by real medical professionals, not a parabiologist who’s studied a little human physiology on the side.”

Fenton shook his head. “Val, listen to... yourself. A parabiologist is _exactly_... what I need.”

“Danny—”

“My call. No hospital. Sam’s right. Too risky.”

“Okay, okay.” She threw her hands up in surrender. “Your call.”

Foley drummed his fingers absently on his knees. “So, the question is, how do we get you past the Guys in White so your mom can take care of it? You can’t even stand up straight.”

Dash narrowed his eyes, looking at the gauze taped to Fenton’s shoulder. “He needs an alibi. Something that’ll explain why he needs help walking—” And then, it hit him. “ _Gone With the Wind_! That’s it!”

“Excuse me?” Manson put voice to the confusion in all their faces. “Are you channeling Mr. Lancer or something?”

“What? Oh, no, not the book. The movie. We pull a _Gone With the Wind_. That’s how we get him past the feds. That’s our alibi.”


	5. Ashley, the Prop Guy, and Belle Watling

Dash’s mind was racing. “What do we need to really sell it? He should _reek_. Foley, too. I don’t have anything here that’d work. We’ll have to pick something up, preferably that drain cleaner they always use.” He looked at his bewildered guests. “You guys are all twenty, right? I don’t suppose any of you have a fake ID? No? Okay, who do we know who’s over twenty-one, then? Jazz... but the feds have her locked down.” He snapped his fingers. “Her boyfriend! You guys trust Nick to not give anything away to the feds, right? Do you have his number?”

Manson crossed her arms. “We trust Nick. You, I’m not so sure about. You wanna fill us in on this plan of yours, or are you just gonna keep babbling incoherently?”

“I’ll explain in a minute. Just let me call Nick, get him on this.” He started to dig into his pocket for his cell, but then paused. “Wait. They’re gonna be checking phone records, so we’ve gotta have a reason for every single call we make I already called Fenton—we can come up with an excuse for that. But I can’t think of a good reason I’d have to call Jazz’s BF. You guys know him better, it should come from one of you. Fenton makes the most sense, since his sister’s the one dating him, but that wouldn’t fit his alibi. Unless... maybe he could butt-dial him. Yeah, yeah, that could work. Fenton, give me your phone. Nick’s in your contacts, right?”

Then, he remembered the two phones Manson had put on the coffee table. One of them must be Fenton’s—she’d been the one to answer it when Dash called earlier. One had a black case with a purple skull on it, and the other had something that looked like planets and stars. Making an educated guess, he grabbed the space-looking phone. “This your cell, Fenton?” Without waiting for anyone to answer, he scrolled through the contacts until he found the entry for Nick Reilly, then placed the call.

Manson flashed him an exasperated look. “Dash, what are you—”

Dash held up a finger for her to wait when Nick answered. “Hey, Danny. What’s up?”

“It’s not Danny, it’s Dash Baxter. We need your help.”

“Dash? The FentonWorks security guy?” Nick’s tone went from confused to alarmed. “Did something happen at FentonWorks?”

“Yeah, but I don’t have time to give you the whole story. Short version: the Guys in White are there, looking for Fenton—Danny. They think he was helping Danny Phantom, and if they can prove it—”

“Say no more. What can I do?”

“They’ve basically got FentonWorks locked down. The rest of the family’s there, and they won’t let them even call their lawyer, because they don’t want ’em warning Danny. They didn’t know I was there, so I snuck out to give him a heads up.”

“Is Jazz okay?”

“Yeah, everyone there is fine. The problem is, Danny got hurt—”  
  
“What? Is he okay?”

“He’s been better. He can’t go to a hospital, because it’ll get back to the feds, and they’ll know he was with Phantom. So he needs to get home, let his mom take a look at him since she knows a lot about medical stuff. But he can’t go there, either, because if they see he’s hurt, they’ll know where he was. We need an alibi that’ll get him past the feds without them looking too closely and that will explain why he’s kinda dragging, so here’s what I need you to do. I need you to go to Red Rum Liquor on Torrance. Pick up a bottle of the worst rock gut you can find. Everclear, if they have it. Pay cash. Then, bring it over to my place. I live in the basement apartment of a brownstone at two-seventeen Twelfth Street. Entrance is in the back. Got that?”

“Wait. You want me to buy booze?”

“Yes. Just get it and bring it here. And if the feds check phone records and ask about this call, it was Fenton. He butt-dialed you, drunk off his ass.”

Fenton sat up a bit on the couch. “Hey, wait. I’m what?”

But Manson’s eyes lit up in understanding. “ _Gone With the Wind_...”

Dash flashed her a grin, ignoring the confused looks from the other three, and then another thought occurred to him. “One more thing, Nick. As soon as I hang up, wait a second and call his girlfriend’s cell. You have her number?”

“Sam doesn’t know about this?”

“No, she knows. She’s right here with me, in fact. I’m just establishing phone records that fit the alibi. Fenton butt-dialed you, drunk off his ass. You were concerned, so you called Manson to tell her. Take about that much time on the phone, then go get the rock gut and bring it here. Got it?”

“No, but calling Sam sounds like a good idea.”

“Good enough.” Dash hung up.

“ _Gone With the Wind_ ,” Manson repeated. “I get it now. And Danny’s Ashley Wilkes.”

“Bingo.”

“So, Nick’s Belle Watling?”

“No. Nick’s just the prop guy. _Kwan_ is Belle Watling.” Putting Fenton’s phone back on the coffee table, he got his own cell out his pocket and hit the speed dial for Kwan just as Sam’s phone rang. He looked at her while he waited for Kwan to pick up. “Don’t talk to Nick too long. Just as long as it would take him to tell you your boyfriend’s shit-faced. Then call Val’s cell as soon as you hang up.”

Valerie arched an eyebrow. “You following this, Sam?”

“Yeah, I think so. In _Gone With the Wind_ , some of the men formed a lynch mob and raided a shanty town where Scarlett had been attacked, but Ashley got shot by the Union soldiers during the raid. So they pretended they were drunk, that they’d been partying all night at Belle Watling’s brothel to throw the soldiers off.” She turned to Dash. “But aren’t you overdoing it a bit? The best lies are the simple ones.”

“The lie _is_ simple. But we’re not just trying to trick someone’s parents. The feds are gonna want _evidence,_ or they’re not gonna buy it. We’re gonna have to create the evidence to back up the simple lie. That’s the part that might be a little complicated.”

“Okay, point.” Grabbing her phone off the coffee table, she hit the TALK button. “Nick? Yeah, I know. I see where he’s going with this, though. Just do what he said, and I’ll explain everything when you get here.”  
  
“Dash-meister!” Kwan answering Dash’s own phone drew his attention away from Manson’s conversation. “You change your mind about coming to the party?”

“Sorry, buddy, no party for me tonight, but I need a solid. You sober?”

“You know the rules. Host stays sober to keep the house from getting trashed. What do you need?”

“I need help running a Statue of Liberty, just like in high school.”

“Wait. What? I thought you couldn’t play anymore—”

Dash sighed. Sometimes Kwan was a little too literal. “Not actual football, Kwan. The kind of play we used to do _off_ the field. You know, so my old man thought I was gonna be one place with you guys, when really I was somewhere else with someone else...”

“Oh, right!” He paused a moment. “But why the fake? I thought everyone knew you were into dudes now.”

“No, no, no. This isn’t about me. This one’s for Danny Phantom.”

Another pause. “No joke? _The_ Danny Phantom?”

“Yeah. The Douches in White are after him again, and we’re gonna help throw them off track.”

“Oh, man, I’m _totally_ in. Those guys are a bunch of tools.”

“But here’s the deal. You’re not gonna be lying to my dad. You’re gonna have to lie to the feds. And you’re gonna have to tell ’em you were serving booze to under-twenty-ones. I mean, I don’t think they’ll care about that. They’re looking to nail Phantom, not a party serving minors. But that’s part of the deal, getting caught on the underage drinking thing. You could get in trouble with the cops. Probably your parents will find out about the party. You still in?”

“For Danny Phantom? You bet.”

“I knew I could count on you. You’re gonna need some help, though. Who else do you trust absolutely who’s sober enough to not screw this up and who’d be willing to lie to the feds for Phantom? Paulina? Dale? Brendon? You think they’d be up for it?”

“Yeah, everyone thinks Phantom rocks. I don’t think Dale is drunk yet. Brendon might be a little too buzzed, but Chris just got here, so he hasn’t gotten into the punch yet, and he _hates_ the Guys in White. Paulina never drinks at these things, and you _know_ she’d do anything for Phantom.”

Dash rolled his eyes. “Yeah, that was never a question. So, you guys are the offensive line. You gotta sell the play, make everyone believe they’re seeing a pass even though it’s really a run. Get everyone but you guys really screaming drunk. Anyone who’s not drunk enough to believe they saw something they didn’t, get rid of ’em. And in about half an hour, start telling everyone that Fenton and Foley were there.”

“Fenton and Foley? At a _jock_ party? Are you serious?”

“Yeah. The feds think Fenton was helping Phantom tonight, and that he knows something that’ll help ’em catch him, and if he doesn’t have an alibi, they’ll arrest him, and he’ll squeal like a fangirl at a Justin Bieber concert.”

“Hey!”

Dash ignored Fenton’s protest. “So that’s the fake pass, got it? He and Foley were there from—what time did the party start?”

“Eight.”

“Okay, hang on.” He took the phone off his ear and looked at the group watching him from the couch. “What time did you guys leave the Nasty Burger and head for the docks?”

Foley was watching him with a sort of shrewd look on his face. “I don’t know, a little after eight?”

“Cool.” He put the phone back to his ear. “Kwan? Say Fenton and Foley got there near the start of the party, no later than eight-thirty, and they got completely shit-faced. Got it?”

“Okay.”

“And then, in about half an hour, say their girlfriends showed up.” He looked at his watch. Not quite quarter to eleven. “Let’s say they show up at eleven-fifteen. And they’re _pissed_. Pissed-mad, not pissed-drunk, I mean. And they drag them out. I mean really drag them, because Fenton is so wasted he can’t walk without help. The girlfriends make a big scene. Everyone thinks it’s hilarious.”

“Fenton and Foley got plastered. Angry girlfriends show up and drag them off. It’s hilarious.”

“Exactly. Think you guys can convince some of the drunks they actually saw that?”

“Please. Paulina could convince most of the guys here that they saw their own mothers, Lancer, and a bus load of nuns get trashed at this party. And not that cool nun that went on _Colbert_ , either, but the old-fashioned kind with the penguin suits.”

Dash snorted at the mental imagery. “Thanks, buddy. I owe you big time.”

“Nah. Anything for Danny Phantom.”

“Awesome. And you’re doing the Trash Can Punch, right? With the grape Kool-aid and Hawaiian Punch?”

“Wouldn’t be a party without it.”

“Dash?”

Dash turned around and saw Foley was still watching him with that shrewd look. “If you wanna really sell it, we could mock up a picture of us at the party, send it to Kwan’s phone. He could show it around, then the drunker people could be convinced they actually saw what’s in the picture live. And it’d be evidence for the Guys in White.”

Grinning, Dash turned his attention back to his cell. “Foley just gave me an idea, Kwan. You using the old Casper High trash can for the punch bowl?”

“Of course. It’s tradition.”

“And you got it set up in the basement, by your Wall of Fame?” He eyed his own Wall of Fame—his collection of football team pictures, awards, Casper High Raven banners, and a few Notre Dame banners and pics that were duct-taped to the white-painted cinder block wall behind the kitchen table. Just like the cinder block wall in Kwan’s basement. He’d have to get rid of the Notre Dame stuff, but otherwise, he had all the same memorabilia as Kwan.

“Where else?”

“If you’ve got any UCLA stuff up or party decorations, take it down and leave just the Casper High stuff. Take a picture of the whole set up and send it to me. We’ll fake a photo of Fenton and Foley at the punch, and text it back to you to show around, help convince the drunks Fenton and Foley were there. And when the feds come around, you can show it to them, too. Oh, and if they ask why I called you, tell them I was worried about Fenton. I’d called him earlier and knew he was drinking, and I was checking up on him, ’kay?”

“What, are you his babysitter now?”

“Pretty much. Security for the Fentons, that’s my job.”

“Okay. You called to check up on Fenton. Got it. I’ll send a pic as soon as I get off the phone.”

“Awesome, dude. And don’t text me after that. Only call me if you absolutely have to, and voice only.”

“You got it.”

“You’re the best, pal.”

“What are friends for?”


	6. Strategize

Dash flicked the END button, disconnecting his call with Kwan. “Great idea, Foley. When Kwan sends the picture, I’ll arrange my wall to match his, and I know I have the same trash can he’s using for a punch bowl. All the guys from the old Casper High varsity squad have them. We’ll set it up, and you and Fenton can pose—”

“Slight problem,” Manson interrupted.

“What’s that?”

“They’re covered in blood. We all are. We’re gonna need fresh clothes to get past the Guys in White.”

“Oh, _hell_. Totally didn’t think of that.” He narrowed his eyes, looking over Foley and then Fenton. Fenton was still bare-chested, his blood-soaked t-shirt in a ball on the floor. Foley was wearing his, but it was definitely ruined. “Did it get on your pants, too, or just your shirts?”

Foley inspected his clothes, while Manson checked Fenton’s jeans. “Danny’s good. The wound’s pretty high on his shoulder.”

“Me, too. My pants look okay.”

“Okay. I think I’ve got shirts for you.”

“Wait. You think Danny and I will fit in your shirts? Dude, your arms are as big as our _thighs_.”

“Well, _duh_. James left some stuff here when we broke up. There’s a box in my closet. I’m pretty sure there’s at least a couple shirts, and he’s kinda scrawny, like you guys.”

That got another protest from Fenton, followed by another shushing from Manson, who then turned to Dash. “I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess you don’t have any girls’ clothes. Val and I will need new shirts, too, if we’re gonna be the ones who bring them home.”

He snorted. “Yeeeeaah. I don’t exactly have a lot of girls staying over.”

“Kinda figured. So, that’s one problem. The next is alibis for the two of us, for where we were between the Nasty Burger and dragging the boys out of the party.”

Valerie shrugged. “Why don’t we just say we went home?”

“We’ll want back up. Home could possibly work for me—my folks are out and my grandma’s home alone. She’d totally vouch for me. But the problem is, she’d have to be clued in, and if we call her, there’ll be a phone record we can’t explain.”

“I got this.” Valerie got up off the arm of the coach. “I’ll get us clothes, and I’ll talk with your grandma, and my dad so they can alibi us. He’s home tonight, I’m pretty sure.”

Manson smiled. “Well, that was easy. Tell ’em we came home after dinner, around eight-thirty, then went out again around quarter to eleven. They don’t know where we went, but we seemed upset.”

“Got it.”  
  
Dash frowned, confused. There was no way Valerie had time to go all the way to her house in midtown, then downtown to Manson’s, and all the way back here, not on foot. Even if he loaned her his car, it would take too long, so she had to be thinking of buying new clothes somewhere. But nothing would be open at this hour. “Where you gonna find clothes around here this time of night? And how are you gonna contact your dad and her grandma without leaving some kind of record? Phone calls, texts, chats, Skypes, they all get logged.”

Valerie smiled, one of those patented, blinding, Valerie-Gray-smiles that could get any straight guy within a two-mile radius to fall at her feet and do her bidding. “Oh, you wouldn’t believe what I can do with _my_ tech.”

He arched an eyebrow at her. “You’ve got tech that can get you a new shirt at eleven o’clock at night?”

“Do not question a girl on a mission to get clothes, Dash.” Foley came over and gave Valerie a quick kiss. “Be careful, baby. Don’t let the Guys in White come after you.”

Brushing off the warning with a wave of her hand, she flashed another dazzling smile. “I can ditch them if they do.” Then, she sobered, looking past him to where Fenton was lying on the couch. “Hang in there, Danny, ’kay? We’ll get you home to your mom.”

He nodded. “Tuck’s right. Be careful.”

“Always.”

As she headed toward the door, Dash’s phone trilled in his pocket, indicating he had a message from Kwan. A quick scan of the attached picture of Kwan’s Trash Can Punch set up at his Wall of Fame reminded Dash. “Hey, Val! While you’re out, stop at the convenience store and get a couple jugs of Hawaiian Punch and some grape Kool-Aid mix. Oh, and some—” He glanced at Kwan’s picture again. “—red plastic cups. The big ones, sixteen or eighteen ounces or whatever they are. Use cash.”

She nodded, and was gone. Dash, meanwhile, brought his phone over to the couch so Manson, Foley, and even Fenton could take a look at it. As he expected, it was a setup he could pretty easily duplicate. “We just need to rearrange my Wall of Fame so it’s set up just like this one. Oh, and let me find the trash can for the punch bowl.”

“You really put punch in a trash can?” Foley wrinkled his nose.

“Not a _used_ trash can, dumbass. We got ’em special for our after-game parties back in high school.”

Manson shook her head. “Drinking Everclear out of a trash can when you were fourteen. And people think it was the football that damaged your brains.”

“Not when we were fourteen. It was seniors only.”

“Oh, well, _seventeen. That_ makes it okay.”

Ignoring the jibe—it was no secret that Manson disapproved of pretty much everything Dash and his crowd did in high school—he went into the kitchen and dug a red vinyl thirteen-gallon trash can with a Casper High Ravens logo on it out of the pantry, then brought it back to the table, where Foley was already pulling pictures and banners off the wall to rearrange them. Manson elected to stay by Fenton’s side on the couch.

Setting the can down on the table, he went over to help Foley with the wall. “You know, I probably missed more of these parties than I went to. More often than not, I used them for cover. I met someone at a football camp I went to the summer before senior year, my first real relationship. He was a wide receiver for Elmerton Magnet. That was pretty much when I finally gave up trying to pretend I was ever gonna like girls. We were together the whole football season, until we kicked their butts in the state quarterfinals. Turns out he was a _really_ sore loser. But that summer, after we got together, is when I came out to Kwan. He used to help cover for me with my folks when I was with my boyfriend. He even got the team to all say I was at the parties without ever telling them what I was really doing.”

Fenton was watching him from the couch, an odd look on his face. “None of your friends... but Kwan ever knew?”

“Not until after I busted my knee and I came out to everyone. Well, except for Paulina. She probably knew before I did. She used to cover for me, too. She’d always be my date to dances, pretend we were an item whenever my parents were around. Best beard a guy could ask for.”

This seemed to surprise Manson. “Really? What was in it for her?”

He bristled. “Nothing. She did it because she was my friend.” Turning around to face her on the couch, he crossed his arms. “You know, I know we weren’t exactly nice to you guys in high school, but we weren’t completely evil. We always had each other’s backs, same as you guys.”

“Like when Valerie’s dad lost all his money?”

She had him there, and his irritation deflated a little. “Yeah, okay. We were awful to her. But you weren’t exactly Miss Congeniality yourself in high school. How many cheerleaders did you actually know well enough to justify your blanket hatred of them all? And you still paint all the jocks and cheerleaders with the same brush, don’t you? When Danny’s folks hired me, were you willing to give me a chance because I said I wanted to make amends for how I treated him in high school, or was it mostly because I’m gay and that makes me ‘different’ enough to meet _your_ standards?”

She didn’t answer, and her two BFFs were making a point of looking anywhere but at her or Dash rather than defending her, so he took that as a concession. Instead, Manson turned to Fenton to inspect his dressing. “I don’t know if we’re gonna get the bleeding under control enough that none of it seeps through a clean shirt.” She pressed on the gauze to see if any more blood would soak through.

“Ow!”

“It’s really tender, too.”

“Well, _yeah_. I... got _shot_.”

“My point is, the Guys in White aren’t gonna just take it on faith that you’re drunk. They’re gonna wanna get a close look at you. And if they jostle you, you’re gonna cry out, and they’ll figure it out. We need a distraction, something to keep them from looking too closely.”

“You ever smell Everclear on someone’s breath?” Dash wrinkled his nose. “Believe me, they’re not gonna wanna get close.”

“I don’t think that’s gonna be enough.”

“As big of clean freaks as they are? It just might be enough. I mean, you shoulda seen ’em at FentonWorks. Their suits were practically—” He frowned as a thought occurred to him. “Wait. Didn’t you say when you were trying to get away from them down on the docks, you dumped a bunch of tomato crates on top of ’em?”

“Yeah. Why?” Foley frowned at him over a Casper High Ravens banner in his hands.

“So, how is it they got piled under a stack of tomato crates without getting a speck on ’em?”

“They didn’t. They were covered in tomato juice.” Foley cracked a grin at the memory. “It woulda been hilarious if, you know, we weren’t afraid Danny was gonna bleed to death.”

“But when they got to FentonWorks, their suits were _pristine_. I’ve seen advertisements for bottled water where the mountain snow was dirtier than those suits were.”

Foley flashed him a dubious look. “They’re on the hunt for their ghost Enemy Number One, and they took the time to change before going to stake out the place they thought he’d show up?”

Fenton gave a weak snort. “They’re obsessive... about the whites. Saw ’em get reamed out by... their boss once after they got... dumped in the mud.”

Dash’s lips curled into a smile. “That’s how we keep them away from you, Fen-technicolor-yawn. You know how to make yourself puke?”

“ _What?”_

“Can you stick your fingers in your throat and make yourself puke?”

“Um... _no_.”

“Syrup of ipecac, then. That’ll make you hurl, and I know I’ve some in the medicine cabinet.”

Manson narrowed her eyes. “Where are you going with this, Dash? I’m pretty sure the last thing we want is for him to throw up. It could cause some internal damage. That’s why you don’t give a trauma patient anything to drink.”

“He was hit in the shoulder, not the gut.”

“Still...”

“If the Guys in White are so obsessed with their white suits they’d change before going after a suspect, what do you think they’d do with a guy covered in barf?”

For the first time the entire evening, Fenton looked alarmed. “Uh... _ew_. _So_ not on board... with this plan.”

Manson, however, seemed to be reconsidering. “Danny, one close look at you and it’s _over_. And you know they still haven’t gotten over the breakout last November. They are just looking for someone to pay for that.”

“Not _my_ idea.”

There it was, another reference to what happened last November. Dash looked back and forth between them, a smile spreading across his face. “I was right. It _was_ you. You guys were the ones who broke Phantom out when the feds captured him, weren’t you?”


	7. Wins and Loss

The three of them regarded Dash a moment, as if considering how to respond before Fenton gave a sort of resigned nod. “Not my idea,” he repeated, and Dash wondered if he was just being modest, or if he really was as annoyed by their rescue of Phantom as he seemed. But his family and friends’ fears about the feds finding out the truth all centered around him, so he must have been the one to call the play. Just being modest, then, Dash decided.

Well, screw that. If it weren’t for the shoulder wound, he’d have clapped the guy on the back hard enough to knock him off the couch. As it was, he left the pile of memorabilia he and Foley were sorting through and went over to sit on the coffee table next to him. “Dude, you’re a _hero_. That is the coolest, ballsiest thing _ever_. Well, next to taking a _bullet_ for him, I mean.”

“They were gonna shoot... a _baby_.”

There again, that reluctance to admit he’d saved Phantom, focusing on someone else instead. What was that about? Maybe he was jealous? There was that video of Phantom and Manson making out that ended up on the internet their junior year of high school. It had proven to be a fake, but still, that had to have left a bitter aftertaste. It had been an ugly few days for him before everyone found out it wasn’t real. Dash himself had been one of the key instigators in said ugliness.

And yet, he saved Phantom from the Guys in White at least twice anyway.

Manson was chewing her lip as she looked over her wounded boyfriend. “I will give you this—we didn’t think it through completely. I mean, I don’t regret what we did, not for a second, and I’d do it again in a heartbeat, but I wish we’d come up with a really good story to keep them off your family’s backs.”

“No alibi?” Dash asked.

She shook her head. “We were in Amity Park fighting Walker and his goons. Remember all those ghosts that think they’re riot police who get to smack down anyone who isn’t following their rules? Well, the Guys in White showed up in force, only instead of doing anything to actually take care of the ghosts that were the problem, they went after Danny—Danny Phantom, I mean. After they got him, the rest of us just kind of dropped off the radar, and the four of us—me, Danny, Tucker, and Val—ended up back at school. Well, Danny went back to Amity for his car to make it look like that’s how we’d gotten there, but otherwise we stayed in Hammond that night.”

“Why Hammond?”

“Well, we were pretty far into Illinois when we finally got Phantom away from them, with the help of some other ghosts. The Guys in White never saw us, but they got infrared readings and knew humans were involved, so we beat a fast retreat, and Hammond was closer than Amity Park, so it just seemed smarter to lay low there and avoid the mess here. Probably was smart in the short run, but in the long run, it looked like we had something to hide.”

“So, what did you tell the feds?”

“That we figured we weren’t needed to fight the ghosts once they got involved, so we just decided to go back to school, but since that doesn’t usually make us back off, they didn’t quite buy it. Plus, Phantom used the Specter Speeder later that night to break out some of the ghosts who’d helped him escape, but got themselves captured in the process. Jazz reported it stolen at the time to try and cover, but they’re not really buying that, either, and it called attention to the family.”

“There was nothing they could actually pin on us,” Foley added, still working on the Wall of Fame, “which frustrates the hell out of them. But there was nothing to really clear us, either. So, they keep looking for something they can nail us with, hoping it’ll lead them back to Phantom.”

Manson sighed. “And now, all this tonight at the docks, and they find a Fenton Thermos. Not damning itself, because it could easily have been Phantom’s. It probably was, actually. But with their suspicions up because of the last time, they’re not gonna just take it on faith that Danny was at some party getting wasted. They’re gonna want a close look.”

Dash pointed at Manson for emphasis. “I’m telling you, if they would actually take the time to change suits in the middle of chasing a suspect just because they got a little tomato juice on them, no way they’re gonna touch him if he’s covered in puke.”

“Ugh.” Fenton groaned. “It’s bad enough... having to act drunk. Don’t want to... hurl on myself, too. Would like to end this night... with _some_ dignity intact.”

Foley joined them from the kitchen and sat beside Dash on the coffee table. “Dude, I know. I’m getting painted as an underage drunk, too.”

“Doesn’t it bother you? You... used to be _mayor_.”

“Yeah, _two years_ ago. That’s, like, over seven hundred news cycles. Nobody gives a crap about me these days. But even if they did, would I let the world think I need rehab to keep the feds from arresting you? In a heartbeat. And honestly? I think Dash’s right.” Foley blinked. “Wow. I never thought I’d say those words.”

Dash glared at him. “You’re hilarious. Good thing for you I don’t wail on scrawny little geeks anymore.” But he wondered if maybe his presence as an outsider was hampering them from really discussing what their best course of action was. Slapping his hands down on his thighs, he stood up. “Listen, you guys can decide about the puking. I need to go find those shirts. If you want, the syrup of ipecac is in the medicine cabinet in the bathroom. Help yourself.” And he left them to hash out what they wanted to do while he went back into his bedroom to find the box of James’s stuff he’d collected after their break-up.

But even digging through the closet in the next room, he could hear them continue their conversation. It wasn’t his fault, really. His apartment was small. It’s not like he was _trying_ to eavesdrop. He just couldn’t escape it in such a small place.

“I know it’s gross and just... degrading, Danny,” he heard Manson say, “and it’s probably not the best thing to do when you’re wounded, but if it keeps them at a distance, maybe it’s worth it.”

“Said the one who... _won’t_ be covered in barf.”

“Dammit, Danny!” That one he could have heard from the next county, let alone the next room, and her voice was about an octave higher, too. “Do you not understand what we’re dealing with here? They _shot_ you. With an actual _bullet_.”

“It wasn’t a... regular bullet.”

“Well, it sure as hell wasn’t a Nerf dart!”

It took him a moment to respond again, and Dash thought maybe it was because he was weak from the injury, but when he did answer her, his voice sounded more steady than it had all night. “It’s going to be okay, Sam. It’s not too deep. And I heal fast.”

“No, it is _not_ okay. They invented an anti-ghost weapon that shoots _bullets—_ and don’t you dare say they weren’t bullets! Why would they invent such a thing when ectoplasmic weapons work so well against ghosts?”

“Because they’re sadistic bastards who enjoy causing as much pain as possible?” That was Foley.

“Bullets are for hurting _living creatures_ , not ghosts. Why do you think they suddenly decided they needed a _ghost_ weapon that could also hurt _humans_?”

There was another long pause. “They don’t know anything, Sam.”

“You don’t know that!”

“The one time they... even got close to the right track—not counting the Reality Gauntlet thing—I was the one person... they _didn’t_ consider. Too prepubescent my _ass_.” That last bit sounded like he was sort of grumbling to himself more than to her.

“Well, they’re considering you now! Ever since last November, they’ve been taking a much closer look at your family.”

“Exactly why... I said it was... a stupid thing to do.”

“So, what, then? We should have _left_ you? _That_ would’ve been the smart thing to do?”

Dash frowned. Left Fenton? Did the Guys in White arrest Fenton at some point? No, that didn’t make any sense. If they’d had something on him, why wouldn’t they just arrest him again? It’s not like they couldn’t find him.

“She’s right, dude. We didn’t have much of a choice.” Foley again.

“If they were even... a little close to the truth, they’d have already arrested me.”

“They don’t need to know the truth to arrest you,” Foley said. “They can arrest you just for being an accomplice. The problem is, if they ever do arrest you, then they _will_ find out the truth. Especially if they see that shoulder wound.”

“Guys—”

“No!” Manson sounded like she might strangle him, making the whole argument moot. “Danny, I don’t give a damn about the ghosts and the all the other dangerous crap. God knows I’m the one who pushed you into most of it in the first place. I’m not even hugely worried about that bullet. I know your mom will fix it and you’ll heal. You always do. But the feds getting their hands on you? I’m sorry, but after what we went through last fall, _that_ scares me.”

“It scares all of us,” Foley agreed.

Fenton’s answer was so quiet Dash almost couldn’t hear it. “I know.”

“They will make you _disappear_.” Manson’s voice was quieter, now, too. “If they ever get close enough—”

“Okay. You win. I’ll... do the barf thing.”

Another long pause, this time on Manson’s end. “Okay.” But she didn’t sound any happier.

“What? What more... can I do?”

“Nothing. It’s not you, it’s _them_. As long as they still think you or someone in your family was part of that raid that rescued Danny Phantom, they’re gonna keep poking around. Eventually they’re gonna figure it out. They’re dumb as rocks, but as long as you keep doing what you do...”

“Whoa. What are you saying? I can’t _stop_. _You_... taught me that.”

“I know! And that’s not what I’m saying. I’m just... I don’t know, okay? I want you to keep being who you are and doing what you do without the goddamn feds dogging you. I want them to decide they were wrong about tonight and wrong about the rescue last November and to just leave you the hell alone! I want to stop being terrified that they’ll arrest you and I’ll never—” She stopped short.

“I’m open... to suggestions.”

“I don’t have any. Except for the syrup of ipecac. It’ll at least help get them off your case tonight.”

“Okay. I told you... okay. Just... don’t worry so much. I’m... not going anywhere.”

“I’ll get the ipecac.”

It was an abrupt end to the conversation, and Dash heard her get up and go into the bathroom across the hall from his bedroom, while Foley took up where she left off. “She’s not the only one who’s afraid of them arresting you, you know.”

“I know. I can’t... fix that.”

“I know, dude. I’m just saying.”

Dash finally found the box of James’s stuff and pulled it out of the closet. As he figured, there were a few t-shirts in there that looked like they’d fit Fenton and Foley. Pulling them out of the box, he started out of the bedroom, but across the hall, he could see Manson through the partially open bathroom door, rummaging through his medicine cabinet.

Intending to ask if he could help her find the ipecac, he reached for the door, but stopped short when she found the bottle, then slammed the medicine cabinet door hard enough Dash was surprised the mirror didn’t shatter. Clutching the bottle in one hand, she covered her mouth with the other and backed up into the wall opposite the counter. Then, sliding slowly down the wall until she was sitting on the floor, knees drawn up to her chest, she took a great, shuddering breath and began to sob.


	8. Staging the Play

Dash stood frozen, watching Manson cry. Not just a few tears running down her cheeks, either, but great, wracking sobs that shook her whole body. But silent sobs. She clearly didn’t want her friends to hear her.

He knew he should just turn around and go back into the living room with the shirts and pretend he didn’t see anything, but he couldn’t move. He had always thought of her as all sharp edges and corners and bite. He’d never seen her look so completely lost and afraid and... _small_. He wouldn’t have guessed it was possible.

And he didn’t even know what she was so afraid of. What they all were so afraid of. He thought he’d finally figured it out when he’d realized they were the ones who’d freed Phantom last year, but this level of paranoia? Being arrested by the feds would suck, but what could they possibly have on Fenton that could be _that_ bad? He couldn’t imagine they could do that much to someone just for being an accomplice to a ghost, no matter how much they hated that ghost.

She took a deep breath and wiped her face with the heel of her hand, indicating she was going to try and pull herself together to come out, so Dash backed away from the door, then turned and went into the living room, where he forced his expression to be neutral and his tone light. “Here are a couple of clean shirts. I wouldn’t put ’em on until the last minute, though, especially you, Fen-totaled. You don’t want the blood to have time to soak through.” He tossed the shirts onto the coffee table. “Foley, let’s you and me finish the wall so we can take that picture as soon as Valerie gets back.”

They were just taping up the last Ravens banner, matching it to the layout in the picture Kwan had sent them, when Manson came out of the bathroom with the syrup of ipecac, which she put on the coffee table before kneeling down beside Fenton, who had drifted off. “He been out long?”

Foley looked over at her. “Couple a minutes. So, what took you so long?”

Standing up, she flashed him a peevish look. “I had to go to the bathroom. Do you mind?”

“Okay, geez! You don’t have to snap.”

She took a breath. “I’m sorry, Tuck. I’m just...”

“I know. It’s cool.”

Hoping to deflect attention away from Manson, who clearly didn’t want anyone to know she’d been crying, Dash made a sweeping motion with his arm toward the newly rearranged Wall of Fame. “It’s done. Now we just need the punch fixings to make a fake punch, and we’re good to go.”

Manson eyed the wall, with the trash can on the table. “That’s, what, a thirteen-gallon can? We’re not really gonna try and mix up enough punch to fill that, are we?”

“Good point. Maybe I could stick a pot in it to take up some room, then we wouldn’t have to make so much.”

He was in the process of fitting his largest cooking pot inside the trash can when Valerie returned. “I’ve got some good news and some bad news. Good news, I got everything we needed.” She was lugging two shopping bags, which she brought into the kitchen and put on the counter. “Two gallons of Hawaiian Punch, a can of grape Kool-Aid mix, eighteen-ounce red plastic cups, and fresh shirts for Sam and me.”

She pulled two shirts out of one of the bags, not new shirts, like Dash was expecting, but shirts he recognized, like they came from hers and Sam’s own closets. “How did you—?”

“What’s the bad news?” Manson cut him off.

“The Guys in White showed up at your house just as I was leaving. Not O. and K. Two other guys.”

So she did go to Sam’s. How on Earth did she get all the way downtown and back so fast on foot?

Manson was more worried about the Guys in White. “ _My_ house? Did they see you?”

“No. I slipped out the back while your grandma was letting them in the front. I did manage to catch a little bit of what they were saying to your grandma, though. They were looking for Danny. I guess when it took longer than they expected for him to show up at FentonWorks, they sent out backup agents to stake out some other places he might go. So I swung by Tucker’s, back to my place again, and even tried Nick’s just in case.”

Dash gaped at her. “You ‘swung by’ _half the town_ in the twenty minutes you were gone? Your name Wally West?”

She ignored him. “They sent a pair of goons to Tuck’s house and my house, but not to Nick’s, as far as I could tell.”

Foley groaned. “That’s just great. Now they’ve got my parents freaked.”

“They’ll have to wait, Tuck. We’ve got bigger tofish to fry.” Manson paid no attention to Foley’s look of disgust at her vegetarian-ized cliché. “They didn’t think of Nick, or here, so that’s good. And it sounds like you got to your dad and my grandma before they showed up, right, Val?”

“Yeah, we’re good. They know the story.”

Manson chewed on her lip a moment, thinking. “So, if they’ve already heard that part of the alibi, that we were home then got a call and took off and we were upset, they’re gonna think that Tucker and Danny were the two humans and that they contacted us for help when Danny got shot. Would that change their plan at all? Are they gonna start searching? Because we don’t want to run into them on the streets. We’ve got to get Danny home before they see him or they might try and take him in for questioning.”

“Well, they’re not roaming the streets doing an all-out manhunt or anything. They’re definitely focused on staking out where they think Danny would most likely go.”

“Okay, so we stick with the plan.”

Dash tried to push the complete physical impossibility of what Valerie was telling him out of his mind and focus on the alibi. “So then, you guys need to change. Let Fenton sleep until we need him, and you guys can help him get dressed. I’ll mix up the mock punch.”

“Nick hasn’t gotten here with the liquor yet,” Foley pointed out.

“We don’t need it for the picture. You guys can gargle with it before we go.”

While they changed, Dash mixed the two jugs of Hawaiian Punch, the Kool-Aid powder, and a couple gallons of water in his biggest mixing bowl, making a concoction that looked more or less like the infamous punch from his high school days. With the cooking pot, lid tightly fastened, taking up a good chunk of the room in the trashcan, the four or five gallons of “punch” he’d made came most of the way to the top of the trash can, looking more or less like the concoction in Kwan’s picture.

Next, Foley worked on the technical details. “Do you know what kind of phone Kwan has and who his provider is?”

“Same as mine on both counts, actually.” Dash handed him his phone to check out.

A wide grin blossomed on Foley’s face. “Perfect. These are some of the most hackable phones around. I can basically get into his account and trick it into thinking your phone is his phone. Then we can replace the picture he sent you with ours, and it’ll be like he took it. In fact, I can even hack the time code, make it look like he took the original picture a lot earlier in the night, like maybe 9:00. That would be ‘proof’ we were there when the stuff at the docks was going down.”

“Really? It’s that easy to do?” Dash cringed at the thought.

“Pretty much. Everything’s cloud-based these days.”

“And the feds won’t be able to tell you did all that?”

Foley sort of wagged his head back and forth. “Technically, if they got a really good IT guy looking at it, they’d eventually be able to track it, but honestly, I don’t think they’ll even think of it. Mostly they’re gonna be examining the picture itself to make sure it isn’t photoshopped or doctored, which it isn’t. With the time stamp, it wouldn’t hold up in court or anything because it’s not hard to alter time stamps, but they can’t prove it was altered, either. I’m reasonably sure they’ll buy it enough to keep from arresting us so we can get Danny past them to his mom.”

“Well, good for the team, I guess, but tomorrow I’m gonna be really creeped out by this.”

“Don’t worry. I only use my powers for good. Oh, hey, if we really wanna give Kwan something to sell the rest of the party guests, we can do another picture where Sam and Valerie are dragging us off, again making it look like he took that picture, only later in the evening. He shows that around to people wasted off Everclear and they’ll probably swear up and down they saw it live.”

Actually staging the pictures was the hard part, though. When they woke Fenton up and got him dressed in the fresh shirt, he wasn’t in any shape to roleplay, and they knew the less he moved around the better, so they waited until the last second before Dash and Foley worked together to help him over to their little stage, where he could lean heavily on the table next to the trash can punch bowl. They put a cup full of fake punch in his left hand and had him drink from it so that the cup covered enough of his face that it wasn’t obvious he was in pain, but it was still very clearly him. Foley had his own cup and just affected a drunken grin. Dash then snapped the picture, making sure it was tight enough that the table itself, different from Kwan’s, was out of the frame. It took a few tries, but he finally got one that easily could have been shot at Kwan’s.

Next, they staged the shot of the girls dragging them off. This one was trickier because Fenton just clearly wasn’t up to the acting this one would require. They almost bagged the plan altogether until Foley got the idea of having him put his whole head in the punch, as if he were bobbing for apples. Manson, who turned out to be a pretty good actress, stood behind him, grabbing him by the shirt as if she were either yanking him out of the punch or pushing him into it—it was hard to tell in the finished still shot. Valerie and Tucker were off to the side, with her dragging him by the arm out of the frame.

The added advantage was that once the picture was done, Fenton’s hair and shirt were wet and sticky with purple punch, which gave further credence to their story. But he was really not happy about it. “Great. Spent all high school trying... _not_ to be the butt of the jocks’ jokes, and now... I’m making myself a laughingstock... on purpose.”

“Suck it up,” Manson told him as they helped him back to the couch. “It beats the alternative.”

That must have served as a reminder of how worried she was about the Guys in White getting too close, because Fenton eyed the syrup of ipecac bottle on the table. “Okay, what do I do with that?”

Manson picked up the bottle and read the directions. “Take one to two tablespoons, followed immediately by a full glass of water. If vomiting hasn’t occurred within twenty to thirty minutes, a second dose can be taken. Well, if it hasn’t happened in twenty to thirty minutes, it’ll be too late for a second dose.”

“Oh, darn,” Fenton said, managing to drip sarcasm despite being in pain.

Dash took one of the cups and scooped up some of the punch, then took a second one to the kitchen and filled it with water and brought them both over to him. “You should drink some of the punch, too, since that’s what you’re supposed to be heaving from.”

“Just do said heaving far away from me.” Foley shuddered. “I’m a sympathetic puker.”

Fenton nodded while Manson measured out the syrup of ipecac into a cup that came with the bottle. He swallowed it, grimacing, then drank the water and some of the punch, as well. “Okay, that was the grossest thing _ever_.”

Foley then got to work on Dash’s phone, getting into Kwan’s account to make it look like he’d taken the pictures in question and changing the time stamp on the first one, while Dash and Valerie cleaned up, tossing everything connected with the farce—the empty punch jugs and Kool-Aid container, the cups, the blood-stained shirts and first aid supplies. Anything that showed they’d been here tonight got tossed into the bag, which Valerie said she’d get rid of.

When Foley was done, he handed Dash’s phone back to him. “Okay. Call Kwan and tell him he has to reboot his phone and restore from backup. Then everything I did will actually be on his phone is if he took those pictures.”

Dash hit the speed dial for Kwan, shaking his head. “Still creeped out.”

“Dash!”

“Kwan, how’s it going? You guys getting the ball rolling?”

“Yeah. Paulina, Dale, and Chris are in. Brendon was a little too far gone.”

“No problem. So, Foley did something tech-geeky to your phone account. He said you need to reboot and restore from backup. When it’s up again, you’ll have two new pictures. One is a shot of Foley and Fenton at the punch, looking plastered. That’ll replace the one you sent me of your punch bowl, so it’ll look like you sent it to me after I called to show me they were there and drinking, but the time stamp will show that you took it around nine o’clock. The second is one of Fenton face-first in the punch and their girlfriends there, dragging them off. You’re gonna say you just took that one. Send it to everyone’s phones like you’re sharing because it’s so hilarious, then you, Paulina, Dale, and Chris go around telling the story, making everyone think it really happened. By the time the feds get there to question you guys, everyone will be sure it happened and will back up the story.”

“Got it.”

“And if the feds ask you about my calls to you, remember: the first one was me asking if Fenton was there, then you sent me the picture of them drinking right after. This one is me calling to tell you I’m there to get Fenton and bring him home, but it’s too late, the girlfriends already collected them. Sound good?”

“Yep. We’re good to go.”

“Thanks, buddy. Seriously, I owe you big time.”

“Nah. It’s for Phantom. We’re cool.”


	9. Tough Call

Dash was just beginning to rearrange his Wall of Fame back to the way it was so if the Guys in White did decide they needed to search his place for some reason, it wouldn’t be exactly like Kwan’s, when a knock on the door startled them. Dash dropped the Notre Dame team picture he was holding and went over to the door. “Who is it?”

“Dash? Is that you? It’s Nick Reilly.”

Dash unlocked the deadbolt, then cracked the door open without removing the chain. On the other side of the door was a tall man, maybe an inch or two shorter than himself, built like a swimmer or runner—fit but not ripped—with brown eyes peering out from under the bill of a red Casper High baseball cap pulled down low over his head. He was carrying a brown paper bag with what looked like a bottle of some sort inside.

“Hey, Nick. Hang on.” Dash closed the door again so he could slide back the chain, then opened it fully, letting him in, then closed and locked it again behind him.

Nick handed him the paper bag. “Here’s your rock gut. Now, where’s—” He stopped short when he saw the others gathered around Danny on the couch. “Whoa. You look like hell, Danny. What happened?”

“Nice hat.” At least Manson seemed to be regaining her snark. Dash found it oddly comforting. “Since when are you a Casper alum?”

“Oh, this?” He pulled the cap off his head, revealing short-cropped light brown hair. “I found it at my place, don’t know where it came from. One of the guys at Axiom maybe. I figured with all the cloak and dagger, I should probably make myself harder to identify while buying the booze. So, does someone wanna fill me in on why we’re pretending Danny’s drunk?” He narrowed his eyes. “And why he’s covered in... what is that? Grape soda?”

“Nice, huh? I... get to be... town wino.”

Manson gave him another look before turning back to Nick. “It’s grape Kool-Aid and Hawaiian Punch. All part of the ruse. He’s playing drunk to cover up the fact that he’s hurt. The Guys in White shot him.”

This news didn’t seem to surprise Nick. “So I gathered. What was it? Looks like something with a little more kick than an ectoplasm blaster or rifle.”

Foley shook his head. “You can say that again. They were shooting bullets.”

Now he reacted. “They... _what?_ ”

“Not regular bullets,” Fenton corrected. “Something they... invented.”

“Still... bullets? _Damn_. Are you—scratch that. Standard question.”

While they were talking, Dash pulled the bottle out of the paper sack and examined the label. It was Everclear, as requested, the 151 proof variety, which would at least make it slightly more bearable for Fenton and Foley than if he’d gotten the 190 proof. “Let the ladies get you up to speed. You boys need to gargle with this stuff. And Fen-teetotaler, you should splash some on your shirt, too, since it was supposed to be in that punch you’ve got all over you.”

Dash handed the bottle to Foley first. He twisted off the cap and took an experimental sniff, then pulled his face away, puckering like he’d been sprayed by a skunk. “Whoa! The rubbing alcohol Sam has in her first aid kit doesn’t smell this potent. What the hell is this stuff?”

“Pure grain alcohol, a hundred and fifty-one proof. Be glad he didn’t buy the one-ninety proof.”

“You want me to put this in my _mouth_?”

“You don’t have to swallow. Just gargle with it.” He grabbed another couple of empty cups from the kitchen and handed them to Fenton and Foley so they could spit the liquor back into them.

Foley took a swig, grimacing so hard Dash thought his face might cave in on itself. After a few seconds, he spit the mouthful into his cup. “Ugh! You guys drink this stuff? For _fun_?”

“Not _straight_ , dumbass. Mixed with stuff.”

“I don’t think there’s anything in the world that would make this taste better.” Foley held the bottle out in Fenton’s general direction. “Okay, your turn.”

“Great. ’Cause you made it look... so fun.” He took the bottle in his left hand and took his own swig, making the same face as Foley. He lasted about thirty seconds before spitting it out. “Okay, I didn’t need... the ipecac. This is enough to make me hurl.”

“Speaking of, you should probably swallow a little so it’s on your stomach when you do hurl. And you need to spill some on your shirt, too.”

“This is just... a more creative way... to wail on me... isn’t it?” But he took another mouthful, a small one, and forced himself to swallow. After which he coughed so hard Dash thought he was going to hack up a lung.

“Wow. Woulda thought that’d make you puke on the spot. Oh well, it’ll come.” He took the bottle back, cupped his hand and poured some into it, then splashed it on Fenton like he was a priest and the Everclear was holy water.

Valerie wrinkled her nose. “That stuff is disgusting. I’m glad I was out of the A-List before you guys started these parties.”

“But mission accomplished,” Manson said, taking a good whiff of her boyfriend, then backing away in disgust. “You reek!”

“We should get going,” Nick said, while Dash took the bottle and the rest of the used cups and threw them into the same trash bag with the rest of the evidence from the evening. “It’s not good to let that arm go untreated so long.”

Valerie took the trash bag from Dash. “Give me two minutes to get rid of this, then we’re good to go.”

“Let’s put him in my car,” Nick suggested. “I can say I drove out to the party after I called Sam, and drove everyone back to Danny’s house.” He eyed Fenton warily. “But if you toss your cookies in my back seat, someone else is cleaning it up.”

“I’ll pay to have it Simonized.” Manson squatted down by the couch. “Let’s get you home.”

While Valerie disappeared God knew where, the rest of them helped Fenton out of the apartment and into Nick’s car, which was parked in the alley behind the building. Foley and Manson climbed in beside him, while Dash took shotgun. A minute later, Valerie jogged up to join them, sliding into the front seat beside Dash.

“Where did you put the stuff?”

“Somewhere they will never, ever find it.”

“Famous last words...”

“Trust me on this. They will _not_ find it.”

On the ride back, they talked through the plan, which Fenton still had reservations about. “My mom will freak... when she sees me. She’ll blow... our cover.”

Nick shook his head. “I don’t think so, given how smart she is. She and Jazz’ll be the first to pick up on what we’re doing. Your dad, on the other hand, and I say this with love—”

“No. Guys in White... told her they shot Danny Phantom.”

“Oh.” Nick reconsidered. “Yeah, you’re right, she’s gonna freak.” Dash didn’t quite follow their line of reasoning, but Nick was already thinking up an addendum to the plan. “Okay, how about this, then? Dash and I go in first, like we’re trying to make sure the coast is clear before the girls bring you guys in. Only we run into the Guys in White. We’ll kind of hem and haw, like we’re covering something, then admit we’re busted and spill the beans about the party and Danny and Tucker being plastered. That way, they’ll know the story before they see you. I think your mom will keep it together until we get rid of them if she gets the plan.”

That seemed to satisfy Fenton, and when they pulled up in front of his house a minute later, they’d worked out the finer details. The house looked dark, which set off all kinds of alarms in Dash’s head. He could almost hear that fish guy from _Star Wars_ screaming _It’s a trap!_ in his head. But then, their whole plan was to spring the trap, so Dash wasn’t sure why it gave him such a feeling of foreboding.

Nick, looking uneasy as well, turned to Dash. “Show time. I guess we’re up.”

“Let me help Fen-toasted out of the car first.”

“We’ve got this,” Manson assured him.

“Are you sure? ’Cause that ipecac should be working anytime now. I just figured, with you a vegetarian and his last meal was a Nasty Burger, and Geek Boy a sympathetic puker—”

Foley was out of the car before Dash could finish the sentence. “He’s all yours, dude.” Manson was a little more reluctant to leave her boyfriend to anyone else’s care, but it wasn’t like he was taking off with him, so she finally slid out of the car so that Dash could get into the back seat to help ease Fenton out.

As soon as they were alone in the car, Dash leaned close to him. “Listen. What you said about wanting to keep your dignity intact, how important is that to you? More important than keeping the feds from finding out the truth? Or is it worth a little more of your dignity to keep them off track?”

Fenton eyed him with suspicion. “Did Sam ask you—”

“No, this is between you and me. Because I know something about trading in your dignity to keep a secret. I spent my entire senior year convincing my dad all I ever did was party and get drunk just so he wouldn’t look too hard at what I really was doing, and I hated every minute of it. Coming out, not pretending to be that idiot anymore, getting some dignity back, that was the best decision I ever made... when I was nineteen. I had my high school diploma, I could get a job, I’d opened my own savings account and managed to sock away a little money so I could afford to get an apartment. A crappy one, but still a place to live.

“But if I’d have done it when I was seventeen? No high school diploma, nowhere to live, no money that my parents couldn’t confiscate. What would I have done if my dad had kicked me out then? I might not have even finished high school, let alone gotten a scholarship to a Catholic university like Notre Dame. However right coming out was—and is—hiding was the right thing, too, at the time. I hated it, but I don’t regret it, because it probably saved my life.

“So, here’s the thing. I don’t know exactly what all you’ve done for Phantom or what you think the feds will do to you if they find out, although you must think it’s worse than a bullet in the shoulder, or you woulda just gone to the hospital in the first place. And I don’t know if this other story we’re selling, making you out to be a drunk, puking on yourself—which, impressive that you haven’t yet, by the way—is worse than the truth for you. But _you_ need to know. _You_ need to decide whether it’s time to hide or time to come out, because no one else can make that call for you. Not your girlfriend, not Foley, certainly not me. And you need to know what you’re willing to sacrifice for whatever call you make. ’Cause either way, there are gonna be sacrifices.”

Fenton’s eyes narrowed as he sort of studied Dash. What he was searching for, Dash didn’t know. Trust? Some kind of sign that this really wasn’t just a more convoluted version of the same kind of torture Dash had put him through during their entire high school and a good chunk of their middle school years? Dash wasn’t sure he could give him that. Hell, if their places had been reversed, Dash didn’t know if he’d ever be able to forgive anyone who’d treated him the way he’d treated Fenton for so long, let alone trust him.

But Dash didn’t have any secrets anymore. He was who he said he was, and Fenton could either believe it, or not.

Outside the car, Manson pounded on the hood. “He’s not _that_ badly hurt. Just help him slide out.”

“Keep your shirt on. I’m letting him ride out a wave of nausea so he can puke on the sidewalk instead of Nick’s car.” To Fenton, he said, “So, which is it?”

It took a moment before he responded, but when he did, there was resolution in his eyes and his voice. “They can’t know. Not yet.”

“How much is it worth to keep it from them? How bad are you willing to look?”

He glanced past Dash’s shoulder to where his girlfriend was waiting for them to get out of the car. “Whatever it takes.”

“It has to be your decision, not hers.”

He nodded, and there was no hesitation. “My decision.”

“Okay, then. I’ve got your back.” Dash put his arm around behind Fenton, being careful not to jostle his right shoulder as he eased him slowly toward the door. Just before he got to the edge and was about to get out, he paused. “And Fenton? Whenever you decide it’s time to stop hiding? I’ve got your back then, too.”


	10. Busted

While Dash fished out his FentonWorks keys, the girls waited at the bottom of the steps with Fenton and Foley slung over their shoulders, already playing the part. For some reason, Fenton still hadn’t thrown up, but there was nothing they could do about it now except hope the alcohol smell and the sticky punch residue would be enough to sell the story.

As quietly as he could, Dash unlocked the front door and swung it open into the darkened living room, but before he and Nick could even step over the threshold, a girl’s voice cried out: “Danny, don’t come in here! The Guys in White—” Fenton’s cousin, Dash barely had time to register before she was cut off, and then there were some scuffling sounds in the kitchen.

Dash and Nick quickly stepped into the house and shut the door behind them just as the light came on and Operative O. came barreling into the room. “Daniel Fenton, you are—” He stopped short when he saw Nick and Dash. “Wait. You’re not Daniel Fenton. Who are you, and how did you get in here?”

“Uh... I’m Dash Baxter. I work here.” He held up his keys by way of explanation.

Nick put more alarm into his voice. “And I’m Nick Reilly, a friend of the family. What are federal agents doing here? Where are the Fentons? Is something wrong?”

“ _Nick?”_ That was Jazz, calling out from the kitchen. “What are you _doing_ here?”

“Quiet!” another deep voice ordered, also from the kitchen. Operative K., obviously.

“Jazz!” Now Nick was upset, and Dash couldn’t tell if it was real or just a great performance. He rushed toward the kitchen, but O. blocked him. The best Nick could do was peer over the agent’s shoulder. “Jazz, is everything all right? What’s going on?” He turned his attention to O. “Let me in there!”

“Might as well bring them in,” K. called from the kitchen. O. took a moment, glaring at Nick, before he stepped aside, letting him rush past. Dash followed, looking as nervous as he could manage. Of course, given what they were trying to pull off, it didn’t exactly take a degree from Julliard for him to seem jumpy.

Once in the kitchen, he saw the Fentons—Mr. and Mrs., Jazz, and Danielle—all seated around the kitchen table with K. standing behind Danielle, his hands clamped down tight on her shoulders as she struggled to get free. There was something odd about the way she was trying to get out from under him, not using her hands, but instead keeping them behind her back in the chair. Frowning, Dash walked a little ways around the table until he saw what was wrong: her hands were cuffed behind the chair with glowing, green handcuffs.

Nick noticed too, and his alarm amped up considerably, but it was Jazz that he went to. “Jazz, are you guys all right? What’s going on? Why are the Guys in White here, and why does Danielle have ghost cuffs on?”

“She was causing _trouble_.” K. glared down at her.

“And they don’t carry regular handcuffs, so they had to use ghost cuffs on her, even though she’s a human,” Jazz added, giving Nick a significant look that Dash couldn’t interpret. “They’re looking for Danny. They—”

“Quiet!” O. ordered. “We’ll do the talking. You, the big guy. What are you doing here, and do you know anything about the whereabouts of Daniel Fenton?”

“Uh...” Dash tried to regain his bearings and remember his lines, such as they were, but he couldn’t help but notice Mrs. Fenton giving him an odd look, a sort of mixture of fear and dread and confusion in her face, but... hope, too? Did she know that he’d been here? Had Mr. Fenton found a way to tell her?

He tried to give her just a flash of a reassuring smile before getting back into character. “Uh... I don’t know where Fenton is, but I’m sure he wasn’t doing anything he wasn’t supposed to be...” His voice was high and squeaky, the words just a little too fast.

O. pounced on this seeming weakness. “You know something, don’t you?”

“Who, me?” Dash took a nervous step backwards. “I don’t know anything! I’m just the security guy!”

K. gave up struggling with Danielle and came around the table towards him behind his partner. “You always show up at work at midnight?”

“I, uh...” He looked at the family who were watching him intently, and he was sure, now, they were waiting for some sort of sign from him as to what the plan was. All of them but Danielle, anyway, who was still trying to get free of the cuffs and glaring daggers at the feds’ backs. Dash’s eyes flicked back to them as they advanced on him. “Sometimes I work night security?” He took another step backwards.

“You know what I think? I think you know exactly where Daniel Fenton is, and you’re protecting him. What do you think, O.?”

“I think you’re right, K.”

“And do you know what we can do to you if you hinder a federal investigation?” O. leered at him.

“No? I—” Dash stopped short. The game had gone on long enough. “All right, all right! I know where he is!”

Mrs. Fenton gasped. Jazz and Mr. Fenton both looked like he’d slapped them, and he was pretty sure if Danielle wasn’t handcuffed to her seat, she’d probably be tackling him right now, judging by the death glare she was giving him. _Crap. Played the part_ too _well. Now_ they _think I’m actually giving up Fenton..._

Nick came to his rescue. He was standing behind the Guys in White, so he took the opportunity to hold up his hand in a gesture of reassurance to the family before stepping in. “Dash, wait—” He stopped, as if weighing something, now that he had the feds’ attention, then gave a dramatic sigh. “Okay, you’re right. We can’t lie to federal agents, and whatever they think Danny was doing has to be worse than what he really was doing. Maybe it’s for the best anyway. The more we help him hide it from his parents, the more we enable him.”

Mrs. Fenton blinked as if trying to read between the lines. Jazz obviously trusted Nick completely, however, because she didn’t even hesitate. “You’re right, Nick. It’s time the truth came out.”

Dash had to admit he was impressed. She had no idea what they were going to say, but she’d managed to back up Nick and play perfectly into their story.

Mr. Fenton still looked a little bewildered. “Jazz? Maybe now’s not the time—”

“No, Dad. Nick’s right. He knows what he’s doing.” She looked at him. “Tell them the truth, Nick.”

“Actually, it’s my fault.” Dash hung his head a bit, as if guilty. “I’m sorry, Mr. and Mrs. F. I’m the one who invited him out the first time.”

By now, even Danielle had caught on that they were telling some kind of cover story and she sat still, watching him. But it was Mrs. Fenton more than anyone he had to get into the act as smoothly as possible. She had to be completely onboard with the plan before she saw her son bent over and unsteady on his feet. “Fen—Danny, I mean, was at a party tonight, him and Foley. Kwan, one of our old classmates, was throwing a big going-back-to-school bash. And Danny... well, he got kinda... drunk.”

Mrs. Fenton’s eyes widened in surprise. “Drunk? _Danny_?”

“Yes, ma’am. Him and Foley both. And, well... it isn’t the first time. I called him at around ten-thirty because I had to ask him something about work. He said he was at Foley’s playing video games, but I could tell he was wasted. A little bit later, I remembered Kwan was having that big party tonight, so I called him to check if they were there, and sure enough...”

K. snorted. “A party? You’re saying Daniel Fenton was at a party tonight? All night?”

“Kwan said he got there kinda near the beginning, so since eight-thirty, maybe? I’m not sure about that, though. I just know he was there when I called Kwan—” He dug out his phone and looked at his call logs. “—ten forty-two.”

Nick looked from O. to K., narrowing his eyes. “Why? Where did you think he was?”

“Never mind that. How do you fit into the picture? Were you also at this alleged party?”

“No. I got a call from Danny. I think it was a butt-dial, because he didn’t talk to me, but I could tell he was at a party and he was... well, pretty trashed. So I called Sam, and she called Valerie, and we all went out to go get them. Dash ran into us there.”

Dash nodded. “Nick brought us all home in his car. The guys and their girlfriends are out on the front porch right now. Me and Nick were supposed to make sure the coast was clear, then the girls were gonna get Foley and Fenton—Danny up to his room and let ’em sleep it off here. We were gonna text Foley’s folks from his phone and say he was spending the night here ’cause they were out ghost-hunting late and he was tired.”

Mrs. Fenton stood up. “Danny’s here?”

Again, Nick moved to intercept. “Yeah, but you’re not gonna like seeing him this way. He’s, like, falling-down drunk. He had his face in the punch like he was bobbing for apples or something when we showed up.”

“Trash Can Punch,” Dash explained. “Everclear mixed with Hawaiian Punch and grape Kool-Aid. _Nasty_ stuff.”

“He can’t even stand up straight.” Nick gave Mrs. Fenton a pointed look. “But he’s _okay_.” He put extra emphasis on the word _okay_. “He just needs to sleep it off.”

There was a flicker of understanding in Mrs. Fenton’s eyes for just a moment, and then her face hardened into a mask of anger. “You bring him in here right now. Tucker, too. I have a few words for them, worrying us sick with the Guys in White here! They think they were out ghost hunting with Danny Phantom! We had no idea where they were! And they were out _drinking_? They’re not legal!”

“You have _got_ to be kidding me.” Danielle sighed loudly and slumped back in her chair in disgust. “Here, I’m thinking my cousin’s a big hero ’cause he’s out helping Danny Phantom catch ghosts, and he’s just getting sloshed at some stupid party? _Lame_.”

O. and K. exchanged looks, not convinced, before O. turned to Nick. “We need to speak with him and his friends. _Now_.”

Nick nodded, looking cowed. “Yeah. They’re waiting on the porch for me to tell ’em the coast is clear.” He turned and headed back to the living room, and everyone else moved to follow, but Danielle called out to K.

“Wait! Can you uncuff me first? It’s not like I have any reason to try and get out of here now or anything.”

K. stopped. “Fine.”

Dash followed behind the Fentons as they went to the front foyer, where Nick opened the front door and poked his head out. “Uh, sorry guys, we’re busted. The feds are here. I guess they think Danny was out ghost hunting with Danny Phantom or something? They want to talk to him.”


	11. Hail Mary

Dash watched the Guys in White as they waited, eager, for their prey to come into the house, but it was Manson who first poked her head in the door, cringing at what she saw. “Oh, _great_. Well, Danny, it’s official. You’re busted.” Moving slowly, she dragged a slumping and woozy-looking Fenton inside. “See? I told you you were gonna get caught if you kept this up. And you know what? I don’t even feel bad.”

“Ssshhhaam?” He slurred her name and blinked stupidly, looking around the room with heavy-lidded eyes. “We home now? Don’t feel sssshhhho good.” Staggering down the two steps into the sunken living room, pulling his girlfriend with him, he made it to the couch before collapsing. Manson let him go, brushing him off like she was well rid of him.

Dash watched Mrs. Fenton’s face carefully as she first saw her son. There was a flicker of relief mixed with concern, and then she schooled her face into that mask of parental anger. “Danny Fenton! _Look_ at you!”

Danielle, leaning on the staircase banister appeared to be watching the show with a mixture of amusement and disdain. “Ooh, cos, you’re in _trouble_.”

“Danielle, shush,” Mrs. Fenton warned.

Next, Valerie dragged Foley in. He was a more happy drunk, leaning on her not quite as heavily as Fenton was leaning on Manson, and singing what sounded like a really off-key rendition of Ember’s “Remember.” He stopped when he saw the crowd in the door. “Did the party move here?” He giggled. “Par-tay at Dan-nay’s.”

Valerie shoved him off of her. “Party’s over. You’re _busted_ , lamebrain.”

“Oh, baby, why you gotta be like that?” He lunged at her, his arms wide like he was going to embrace her, but she stepped aside and he stumbled down the steps to land face-first on the carpet in front of the couch at Manson’s feet.

“You are _all_ busted!” Mr. Fenton glared at them, and if Dash hadn’t know it was an act, he’d be afraid for their lives. “You may be adults, but drinking is still illegal for someone your age. What were you _thinking_?”

Mrs. Fenton crossed her arms and glared across the lot of them. “And you all knew about this? Sam? Valerie? Jazz?”

Sam looked down, contrite. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Fenton.”

“Me, too, Mom.”

“Well, _I_ didn’t know! No one tells me _anything_!” Now, Danielle looked petulant.

Lurching forward in his seat, Fenton prodded Foley with his foot. “Ge’ up, Tuck. I thin’... think my parentssshh shusssshpect ssshhomethin’.”

Mrs. F. looked down at the couch, shaking her head at her son. Stepping down in the living room, she got close enough to smell them and recoiled. “ _Whoa_. You smell like the morning after a frat party. You both need to go sleep it off. We’ll talk about this in the morning. And we _will_ be calling your parents, Tucker.”

“Not so fast.” O. looked from Fenton to Foley and back. “This is all a little too convenient.” He looked down at Fenton. “You say you were at a party tonight?”

He looked up at the agent, blinking a few times as if he couldn’t quite focus. “Party? No, no party. Tuck’sh housshe. Played _Ghossshht Hunt: White Opsssh_.”

Foley giggled again as he looked up at O. “You’d like that game.”

“Danny!” Manson glared at him. “You’re not fooling anybody! You reek of that godawful punch, a good helping of which you’re wearing on your shirt, and you can’t even stand up straight. _Everyone can see you’re completely plastered._ ”

“I... not sshhhooo very drunk, Sshhammy.”

Dash grinned in spite of himself. Either it was a coincidence, or Fenton had been more alert all night than Dash would’ve given him credit for. He was actually quoting—with some liberties—Ashley Wilkes from the _Gone With the Wind_ scene that had given Dash the idea in the first place.

If Manson recognized the quote, she didn’t show it. “Like hell you’re not! The Guys in White think you were out ghost hunting with Danny Phantom or something. Just tell the truth! Tell them you were at a party at Kwan’s!”

“I... I don’t feel ssshho good.” His head lolled forward.

She let out an exasperated grunt before turning to face the feds. “He and Tucker were at a party at an old high school classmate’s house, although they were supposed to be at Tucker’s playing video games.” She glowered at them both again.

K. looked skeptical. “And what time did you arrive at this party?”

Foley lifted his head from the floor. “Ain’t no party like a Ravens party, ’cause a Ravens party don’t stop.” And then his head dropped down again, and he promptly began snoring.

“Oh, honestly!” Valerie threw up her hands, matching Manson’s tone of disgust. “We had dinner at the Nasty Burger at around seven, I think. We hung out there for a while, then the boys said they wanted to have some ‘guy time’”—she made air quotes—“at Tucker’s playing that White Ops game, so we left about eight, I think.”

“And where were the two of you?”

“I went home.”

“I did, too.”

“Was anyone there?”

“My dad.”

“My grandma.”

“And how did you end up here?”

Manson jerked her head toward Nick. “Nick called me, after Danny butt-dialed him.”

At the mention of his name, Fenton’s head popped up. “My butt takessshh the fifth.”

Manson rolled her eyes. “So, Nick told me what was going on. I knew Kwan was having a party and was pretty sure that’s where he was, so I told Nick and he said he’d meet me there to bring them home. Then, I called Valerie so she could help with Tucker.”

“When was this?”

“I don’t know, eleven-ish? A little before that? I can look at my call logs.” She pulled her phone out and scrolled through her log. “Uh, quarter to eleven.”

K.’s brow furrowed as he turned to Dash. “Isn’t that when you said you called the party?”

Crud. That was a bit of a coincidence. He should’ve thought of that. He just shrugged, though. “I guess. Like I said, I’d called Fenton a bit earlier, and he was drunk, and then I remembered about Kwan’s party and thought I’d check up on them ’cause I’ve been worried, and sure enough...”

“You have an address for this Kwan?”

“Uh... he sent me a picture after I talked to him so I could see for myself. I can show you that, if you need proof that they were there.” Dash took out his phone and scrolled through the messages to find the picture Kwan had sent, now altered to actually be the picture they’d taken of Fenton and Foley at his own apartment. He showed the two agents. “See?”

They took the phone and looked at it closely, frowning over their dark glasses. After what seemed like hours, O. handed it back to him. “We’re still going to have to check out your story. We’ll need a full name and address.”

“Uh...”

K. looked at him over the top of his shades. “Is there a problem with us going and talking to your friend to confirm your story?”

“Um... I really don’t want to get him in trouble for the underage drinking thing, and his parents don’t know he was having a party...”

“Do we look like the local police to you? We don’t care about the underage drinking. Just give us a name and address.”

Dash sighed, as if very reluctant. “Kwan is _so_ never gonna speak to me again.” He gave them all Kwan’s contact information, which O. copied down in a notebook.

“All right, gentlemen.” Mrs. Fenton spoke with the finality of a dinner party hostess brushing off guests who had lingered too long. “You have the information you were looking for. Now, if you’d kindly let me and my husband handle this...”

“Oh, we’re far from done here,” K. told her. “We’d like to hear in your son’s own words where he was tonight.”

“Obviously, he’s in no condition to talk to you right now.” She jerked her head toward the couch, where Fenton’s head was lolled forward against his chest, as if he were passed out.

But Dash could tell they weren’t going to let up, and if they got too close and saw his shoulder was hurt, or if blood seeped through the dressing and shirt... He had to get their attention diverted, get them thinking they’d been on the wrong track all along. Glancing at Fenton, he pressed his lips together. _Hope you meant it when you said what whatever it takes..._

With a sigh, he turned to Mr. and Mrs. Fenton. “I am so sorry, Mr. and Mrs. F. It’s my fault he’s in this condition. I’m the one who took him out drinking the first time. Him and Foley both. It’s been going on for over a year now, since last summer.”

Manson’s eyes widened. He was going off the script they’d planned in the car and into more dangerous territory. The Guys in White had their attention on him at the moment and weren’t looking at her or Fenton, so she mouthed the word _simple_ at him, along with a pointed look.

Behind her on the couch, Fenton’s head came up, all bleariness gone while the Guys in White weren’t looking, and he was giving Dash an almost penetrating look, like he was trying to read exactly where Dash was going with this.

Even Mrs. Fenton seemed a little thrown off, even though she hadn’t known the original plan. She tilted her head, confused. “But... that was before you came to work here.”

He nodded, silently thanking her for playing it right even without the warning. “I know. I ran into the two of them, Danny and Foley, at the Nasty Burger last summer, and we got to talking about the good old days at Casper High. It’d been about six months since my knee surgery, I was still in pain, and I was taking losing my scholarship and football career pretty hard, so I was drinking then. A _lot_. I knew this bar in Elmerton where this one bartender was pretty lax with carding, so I told the two of them I’d buy ’em a drink. For old time’s sake.

“We all got pretty toasted, and I guess the two of them had a pretty good time, so they went there a lot that summer. Their girlfriends didn’t even know about it, not for a few months. It wasn’t until like, Halloween, I think, before they found out. Or, no, it was just after that. The night all those ghost cops went nuts all over town. Remember?” He looked to Manson and Valerie as if for confirmation.

This got a reaction out of everyone. Mrs. Fenton’s eyes widened, and Jazz had to cover her mouth to keep from gasping. Danielle, who had been leaning against the banister almost lazily stood up straight. Fenton and his pals exchanged apprehensive glances, and then Manson glared daggers at Dash, the warning plain in her eyes: _Screw this up, call more attention to him, to that night, and I will_ kill _you._

The Guys in White had the strongest reaction of all, however. What had been sort of a general skepticism turned into more pointed disbelief, and they were looking at him in a way that almost made him feel like those shades they always wore had x-ray vision. K. leaned forward, like a linebacker staring down the quarterback, just daring him to make one slip, one opening to get himself annihilated. “Last November, the night all the ghosts attacked? You’re saying you know where Daniel Fenton was that night?”

Dash swallowed, wondering for a moment if he hadn’t gone too far, if Manson was right, simple was better, and he was attempting a Hail Mary pass when it was second and five with a quarter left to go and all he really needed was a first down.

But the play was already in motion, and he was committed to this course of action. So, he did the only thing he could do, and threw the pass. _Hail Mary, full of grace..._ “Yeah. He and Foley, they were with me.”


	12. The Alibi

While Manson continued to stare daggers at Dash for the massive risk he was taking with her boyfriend’s freedom, the feds crowded in on him. “Really?” O. asked. “And what made you bring that up all of a sudden, right here, right now, nine months after the fact?”

“Uh...” Dash swallowed again, suddenly very aware that everyone was staring at him. “Uh, because, like I said, it was the night their girlfriends first found out.” He turned to Mr. and Mrs. Fenton, and he found himself feeling as abashed as he was supposed to be acting. It was their son he was maligning in the name of protecting him, protection that wouldn’t be worth squat if the feds didn’t buy it.

He coughed. “So, you shouldn’t be mad at Manson—Sam, I mean—and Valerie, because they really had no idea how bad things were, since they didn’t know it wasn’t the first time. Neither did Jazz. It was all my fault.”

K. tapped his foot. “Getting back to that night in November, when you were with Mr. Fenton and Mr. Foley...”

“Right. Well, I was at our bar in Elmerton, ’cause, well, back then I was there most nights. Like I said, this one bartender, he was pretty lax with the carding. So, Fenton and Foley showed up, which was kinda getting to be a regular thing when they were home from school. Only, this night was different because they were bitching and moaning about all these ghosts, and how they’d been fighting them, but then you guys showed up and took over and they’d come home for the weekend for nothing, so they were gonna party extra hard to make it worth the trip home. So, they got hammered worse than ever before, Fenton got sick all over the floor—that guy _so_ can’t hold his liquor—and our bartender buddy had enough and kicked all three of us out and said he was gonna start carding from now on and we weren’t welcome back.”

“And?”

“Well, we kind of wandered around a while. I don’t even remember where—I was almost as trashed as they were. But at some point, Manson and Valerie found us, and they were _pissed_. No one knew where these two were, and with all the ghosts around, they thought maybe they got hurt or something. They’d never seen ’em drunk before, thought it was just a one-time thing, so they decided to just take Danny’s car and drive back to school, let ’em sleep it off at their campus apartments so that you guys and Tucker’s folks wouldn’t find out.”

“That’s when I found out, too, Mom,” Jazz said, taking the story and running with it. “Nick and I caught them when they came home to get Danny’s car. Danny swore up and down that it was the first time he’d ever gotten drunk and he wouldn’t do it again, at least not until he was legal, so we just let it go and let Sam and Valerie drive them back to school.”

K. turned his attention to her, looking like he wanted to shoot her with one of his ecto-weapons. “And when we questioned you about that night before, you just forgot that little detail?”

Cringing, she looked down at the floor. “I know, I know, we should have told you. But we didn’t want our parents to know, and we really didn’t want him to get in trouble for underage drinking. I mean, if I’d have known then what was really going on, I would’ve busted him myself. But I didn’t know, and I didn’t want him to get in trouble with my folks or with the law over what I thought was one stupid mistake.”

Dash stepped back in before Jazz could say anything outside of the very small window that Dash knew he could corroborate, directing his comments to the Fentons again. “Look, I’m sorry, Mr. and Mrs. F. You guys have been really good to me, and I feel bad for not telling you what was going on sooner, ’cause I think Danny needs some help. That night that we got kicked out of the bar, that was kind of my rock bottom, and I stopped drinking so much, threw out my fake ID, and started trying to figure out what to do with my life now that I wasn’t ever gonna be in the NFL. And at the time, I thought Danny and Foley had hit bottom, too. Danny came to see me not long after that, totally sober, and said he felt bad about what had happened. He knew my life was kinda sucking and I needed a better job than the minimum wage stuff I was doing after I lost my scholarship, so he said he’d heard you guys talking about maybe hiring a security guy after New Year’s, and that he’d put in a good word if I wanted to apply for the job.”

He breathed out a long sigh. “So, I cleaned up my act, applied for the job when you posted it, and I thought everything was great. But as soon as summer break came again and they were back home full-time, I started noticing that he and Foley were hiding something. And I figured they were still drinking. Their girlfriends noticed, too, and so did Jazz, and she told Nick, of course, but none of us were sure what to do. We even talked about doing an intervention, and Jazz threatened to tell you guys, but they just kept denying it. Then tonight, when I called him, it was obvious he was drunk, and a little later I remembered Kwan was having that party and figured, free booze, no carding worries, that must be where they were. So I called Kwan to check, and sure enough...”

Hanging his head, he put all the regret and shame into his voice that he could. “I’m really sorry I didn’t say anything sooner. If you wanna fire me, I’d totally understand...”

Mr. Fenton’s arms were crossed in front of his massive chest, his face dark. “We’ll talk about that later.”

Dash really hoped that was just an act, because he actually liked his job quite a bit.

Mrs. F., however, looked more disappointed than mad, and he had a little more confidence she was just going along with the act. “The important thing is, we know the truth now.”

But were the Guys in White buying it? K. certainly didn’t look like he was brimming with trust. “That’s quite a story. This bartender. He got a name?”

Dash had to hide a smile as he affected panic. “Oh, come on, you don’t need to talk to him! That has nothing to do with tonight. I was just explaining to the Fentons—”

“We’ll decide who we need to talk to.”

“But I _reaaaally_ don’t want to get him in trouble. He could lose his job. And that was months ago. I hear that bar is much better about carding, now. No one under twenty-one gets in anymore.”

“It’s simple. Either you give us a name to corroborate your story, or we haul _you_ in for hindering a federal investigation. Which we will also do if we find out you were lying, by the way.”

It wasn’t hard to act more than a little intimidated by that threat. “Okay, okay! I don’t know his full name, but his first name is Scott. The bar is the Overlook in Elmerton. But I haven’t been there since that night, so I don’t know if he even works there anymore.”

“Anyone else who can corroborate your story? Regulars?”

“Dude, we were _nineteen_. We kept a low profile. Except for that last time. But I didn’t exactly go there to make friends. The only one I ever recognized was the one bartender.”

Mrs. Fenton put her hands on her hips. “Now do you have enough information? I’d really like to get these two into bed.”

“Bed.” Fenton’s head popped up, as if he’d just been startled out of sleep. “Don’t feel ssshho good.”

“Not quite yet.” O. moved toward the couch, K. at his side. Manson immediately stepped in to block, but O. brushed her aside. “We still need to hear it from you, Mr. Fenton. Exactly what time did you get to this party tonight?”

“What were you drinking?”

“Who did you talk to?”

His mom came around the side, trying to flank them. “Look at him! He’s not even fully conscious! He’s in no condition to answer any questions. You can come back tomorrow—”

“Or we could take him into headquarters, find out just how drunk he really is...” They reached Fenton, one on either side of him and, grabbing him by the arms, hauled him to his feet.

Dash winced and Manson and Valerie both gasped. Yanking his right arm with that bullet wound was gonna hurt like a _mother_ , and the jig was _so_ gonna be up as soon as he screamed...

But if Fenton did scream, it was hard to tell, because apparently jostling his hurt arm was more than his stomach could handle, and the next thing Dash knew, he was emptying its contents onto the pair of white suits in front of him, drenching them in a purple-tinged mess that smelled like a wino who’d slept in the dumpster behind the Nasty Burger.

Dropping his arms like he’d scaled them, both federal agents staggered back. Without anyone holding him up, Fenton fell to his knees and heaved again, this time nailing their perfectly-pressed pant cuffs and their polished, black leather shoes.

Dash bit his lip to keep from laughing. “Told you he couldn’t hold his liquor.”

He wasn’t the only one who had to fight back the laughter. Manson and Valerie’s eyes got very big, and both of them were pressing their lips together so hard he thought they were going to bite them off their own faces. Mr. Fenton had to look away, and Jazz’s expression looked like it might be permanently stuck somewhere between disgust and amusement. Even Foley, still faking being passed out, couldn’t quite control his shoulders from shaking in silent laughter.

Danielle alone didn’t try to contain her delight. She not only burst out in loud, unrestrained laughter, she managed to dig out her phone and snap a picture of the soiled federal operatives. “Oh. Em. Gee. This is _so_ going on my Faceplace page!”

Mrs. Fenton, however, did not seem amused. “Jazz. Get some paper towels and that spray bottle from under the kitchen sink, and a glass of water for Danny. Jack, help me get him to the bathroom.” She gave the Guys in White a very pointed look. “Unless you feel the need to question him some more this very instant.”

K. held up his hands, horrified, as he backed further away. “Cleanliness Breach Oh-Seven-Niner!”

“Second time tonight! We’re going to need to requisition extra bleach. Lots and lots of bleach.” He shuddered. “We can come back tomorrow when he’s... feeling better.”

“Copy that. And once we’re back in regulation whites, we can question that Kwan kid and the bartender.”

“Agreed.” O. glared down at Fenton, now flanked by his two parents. “But don’t leave town. We’re not finished with you.” And then, two agents beat a hasty retreat.

As soon as the door closed behind them, Foley jumped up off the floor and backed as far away as he could from the pool at Fenton’s feet—although thankfully, the vast majority of it ended up on the Guys in White and never made it to the floor. As soon as he was a safe distance, Foley held up his left hand for silence while digging his SmartPhone out of his pocket with his right. Thumb flying across the phone’s keypad, he studied the results of whatever he was doing for a moment before looking up.

“We’re clear. No listening devices left behind. And can I just say that, although I might hurl myself right now, that was the most awesome timing _ever_ , dude!”

“ _Beyond_ awesome,” Danielle agreed. “And I totally am going to post that picture on Faceplace.”

“No, you’re not, young lady.” Mrs. Fenton was all business. “What you’re going to do is go lock the door and close all the blinds and remember that what happens in this house _stays_ in this house. No Faceplace, no blogs, no texting pictures, no telling stories to your friends. We are not going to antagonize those agents and get them any more interested in us than they already are, is that clear?”

The youngest Fenton nodded, face full of disappointment, but she did as instructed, locking the front door and going around the first floor closing all the blinds.

Mrs. Fenton turned her admonishment to Dash. “And I really hope they’re not going to be even _more_ interested after they talk to all those people and what they have to say contradicts the stories we’ve heard here tonight...”

“No, ma’am,” he assured her. “Those guys’ll back every word. I promise you.”

Foley nodded. “We laid a lot of groundwork before coming here, Mrs. F. Although the stuff about last November is new.” He gave Dash a pointed look. “That bartender...”

“I got it covered.”

Mr. Fenton gave him a nod. “Thanks, Dash. I knew you’d get to him and warn him. You definitely were the right man for the job.”

That loosened the knot in his gut a little bit. At least Mr. Fenton trusted him, even if Mrs. Fenton wasn’t so sure. Not that he could blame her. She had every reason to be worried about her son, given everything that had happened to him. Already she was kneeling at his side, concerns about alibis apparently forgotten. “All right, sweetie, what did they do to you? They said—”

He cut her off. “I’m okay. Shot in my... arm. Shoulder. Hurts, especially them grabbing it, but... I don’t think it hit bone or... anything really bad. Need the bullet... or pellet... or whatever it is _out_. Coated with something... messes with ghost powers.”

She grimaced. “ _Bullets_. I still can’t believe they used bullets for ghosts. What were they _thinking_?”

“Don’t get Sam... started on... bullets.”

“Shut up, Danny, and let your mom take care of you now.”

Jazz returned with the water, and Mrs. Fenton offered him a sip. “Are you going to be sick again? Should we take you to the bathroom?”

He shook his head, then took a sip from the cup as she held it for him. “Okay... now.”

“You didn’t really drink any of that Everclear stuff, did you? Although you sure smell like you did...”

“Gargled, mostly. Spilled on shirt. One swallow, plus some syrup of... ipecac to make me sick... so feds would... keep away, not see my shoulder. Wouldn’t want to mess up... their nice white suits.” He chuckled, but it kind of turned into a cough.

“Hush. If you don’t think you’re going to throw up again, let’s get you back to the couch. I want to see what we’re looking at before I decide if I can take care of it here, or if we need to take you to the hospital.”

“ _No_. No hospital. I’m good. Couch is good.”

As his parents helped him to his feet and back to the couch, then eased him out of his shirt so Mrs. Fenton could look at his shoulder, Manson, Foley and Valerie hovered nearby, anxious. Nick, meanwhile, took the paper towel and spray bottle that Jazz had brought back along with the water and started to clean up the mess so Jazz could join the crowd around her brother, along with Danielle, who had finished closing all the downstairs blinds.

Dash stood quietly back from the bustle of activity, the outsider once more, now that he no longer really had a role to play with Fenton home, safely past the feds, and in his mother’s care.

At least not a role to play _here._

He stayed just long enough to hear Mrs. F. declare the wound didn’t look too serious and she was pretty sure she could take care of it up in the Ops-Center, that crazy contraption Mr. F. had built onto the roof of the house. When it was clear Mr. Fenton didn’t need any help carrying him up there, Dash let himself out the front door, leaving the family to take care of their own.

It’d been nice, being the quarterback again, calling the last-minute play changes on the field, if only for a brief moment. But that was over. He wasn’t the quarterback anymore, he was the guard. And he had his own job to do.


	13. Secret for a Secret

It was six o’clock, and the sun was just beginning to rise, glinting off the upper edges of the metal Ops-Center on top of the FentonWorks building when Dash let himself back into the front door. His intention was to go down into the basement and return the remote he’d borrowed from the Specter Speeder when he’d made his escape last night—Was it really only last night? Seemed like months ago—but he didn’t make it past the living room when a voice startled him.

“You’re here awfully early. And on a Sunday?”

Jumping, he turned around to find Fenton lying in the gloom on the couch.

“Fen-toad, _Jesus_! You scared the crap out of me!” He narrowed his eyes. “What the hell are you doing down here? Shouldn’t you be sleeping off a ton of morphine right about now?”

He shrugged, throwing off the blanket that was covering him and sitting up. “I heal fast.”

Dash gaped at him. “So I keep hearing, but _dude_.”

Fenton reached over and switched on a lamp next to the couch, then rubbed his eyes against the sudden glare. “Truth is, my mom did give me something to make me sleep, but I think she underestimated how quick it would wear off. And sleeping in my bed, I kept rolling over onto my arm which, fast healing or not, _really_ not fun. So I came down here where I could prop up a lot of pillows to help keep me from rolling.” He leaned forward, and lowered his voice, conspiratorial. “That, and my mom checks up on me less when I’m all the way down here.”

“I woulda thought she’d camp out next to you. Her and your pals. They’re kinda protective of you.”

“You noticed?” He grinned, and Dash was surprised how almost his old self he looked, given what he’d been through just hours earlier.

“So, where is everyone?”

“We had to keep up appearances. My parents called Tucker’s parents, told them the party story and that they’d better come pick him up. Then when they got here, they told them the truth. Sam and Val went home a few hours ago. They’ll be back tomorrow—er, later today.” He jerked his head toward the overstuffed chair next to the couch, inviting Dash to sit. “So, that’s what I’m doing here. What’s your story? You couldn’t have gotten more than a couple hours of sleep if you’re back this early.”

 “Actually, haven’t been to bed yet.” Dash took the proffered seat. “I just came to return the remote to the lab-garage exit that I used to get out last night to go find you guys.”

“You left pretty quickly. My mom was looking for you. She wanted to thank you for... well, everything.”

“Yeah, well, she wouldn’t be thanking me if I didn’t get to my bartender friend before the feds and he didn’t know what the hell they were talking about.”

“That was an... interesting story. You might’ve wanted to give us a heads up on where you were going with that one.”

“I know, sorry about that. But I kept thinking about how you guys were saying not having an alibi for the night you rescued Phantom was what was keeping them all over you, and you said whatever it takes to keep ’em off your back, so I called an audible.”

“Without checking with the bartender first to make sure he was in?”

“Oh, I knew he’d be in. The only trick was getting to him before the feds.”

Fenton seemed to be chewing on something. “So, he’s okay lying to government agents and risking his job and a hefty fine to say he was selling alcohol to underage drinkers all to cover for a complete stranger?”

“Not for a stranger. For Danny Phantom.”

That didn’t seem to ease whatever was gnawing at him. “It was bad enough all your high school friends lying for me, but at least they know me. This guy I’ve never met, risking his job...”

“Trust me, it was never _his_ job he was worried about.” When Fenton raised his eyebrows, obviously expecting more of an explanation, Dash let out a long breath. “I kept his brother from getting kicked out of the Air Force.”

Again, no comment from Fenton, but a questioning look. Dash leaned back and put his feet up on the ottoman in front of his chair. “Remember I told you guys about that guy I dated in high school? Well, after I hurt my knee and decided to come out, I told my parents that all those times they thought I was out partying with the team, I was really out with my boyfriend. My dad completely flipped out and accused me of every stereotype of gay sex you’ve ever heard. I was having anonymous sex in the men’s room. In parks. I was doing a different guy every night, plying little boys with candy. You name it. So I told him, no, I’d had one boyfriend in high school. One. And we didn’t even get past, like, second base. And I made the huge mistake of telling him his name.”

Fenton winced. “What’d your dad do?”

“Found out where he lived. Went over and screamed at his mom. Single mom, never met her, but Tyler—that’s my ex—had nothing but good things to say about her. He was out to her and his brother, but in the closet to everyone else because he wanted to go into the Air Force. So, when my dad went over and harassed her, she told him her son’s personal life was none of his business and threatened to call the cops on him. Wish she would’ve. But he saw a picture on the mantle of Ty in his Air Force cadet uniform and he said he was gonna make a formal complaint, get that ‘pervert’ out of the military.”

“Oh, _man_.”

“I know, right? It was when they were having all those debates about Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, too, right before they signed the repeal into law, and the gay advocacy groups were all warning service members to be extra cautious. And all Ty ever wanted to do was be a pilot.”

“So what happened?”

“Well, Ty’s mom was totally freaked, called his older brother, Scott, who drove straight to my dad’s place, got there before he even got home. I was out front, packing up the last of my things—my dad had already told me I’d better be out of the house before he got back, and my mom had locked herself in her room, crying. So, I’m in the driveway, in the _snow_ , ’cause it was like two weeks before Christmas, packing up my car, and this guy I’d never seen before drives up, gets out of his car, and asks me if I’m Dash Baxter. And when I said I was, he hauls off and socks me in the jaw.”

Fenton’s eyes widened. “No!”

“Yeah.” Dash grinned. “I know you know better than most I’ve been in my share of fights, but I have never had anyone actually _pick_ a fight with me out of the blue. He’s not a big guy, either. Ty got all the muscles in the family, and even he was kinda small for a football player. But this guy was _pissed_ and I wasn’t expecting it, so he decked me pretty good. And when I got over my shock enough to ask him what the hell that was for, he told me the whole story.”

“What did you do?”

“You mean besides nearly dying of embarrassment? My dad came home and I confronted him. Told him he had no business messing with these people, it was none of his business, blah blah blah. He didn’t care. He wasn’t gonna let some pervert be in his country’s armed forces, dammit. So, I told him I’d made the whole thing up. That I’d never said more than two words to Tyler, that he’d had a girlfriend when we were in camp together and all through high school, and I just had a crush on him because he was hot.”

“Did he buy it?”

“Not at first. But I told him he was right, that really I’d been doing all the things he accused me of—the anonymous bathroom sex, the movie houses, the new-stranger-a-day, all of it except the sicko kid stuff, ’cause just... no. And I said I’d made up the thing about dating that guy to cover it all up.”

Fenton’s eyes darkened, and he looked almost like his dad had when he’d been pretending to be mad about the drinking. It took him a minute before he spoke. “And _that_ he believed.”

Dash shrugged. “Sure. It fits his whole worldview about homos _exsssshh_ uals.” He drawled the word like a Southern preacher.

“Dash, I— I don’t even know what to say. I knew your dad was an ass about the whole thing, but this...”

He shrugged again. “He’s a piece of work, but whatcha gonna do? Can’t pick your family. By that point, it didn’t really matter to me what the SOB thought. I mean, he was kicking me out of the house at Christmas, for Chrissakes!

“But Scott, he looked at me kinda like you did just now. After my dad stormed back into the house, Scott apologized for hitting me. I told him I deserved it—I had no business naming names, especially when I knew Ty’s dream was to be in the Air Force. It was all he ever talked about. Still, Scott was pretty impressed that I’d let my dad think all those things about me just to save his kid brother. I guess Ty was the first one in the family to go to college, and they were really proud of him.

“So, he told me he owed me. Anytime, anywhere, anything I needed, just let him know. Told me where he worked, and to look him up if ever I needed anything at all. I never actually planned on calling in that marker, to be honest. I mean, I figured I owed Ty for outing him without his permission, and for being a douche and dumping him in the first place over a stupid football game.”

Fenton arched an eyebrow at him. “Wait. You said _he_ dumped _you_ because our team beat his team.”

“Yeah... I lied. We lost to them, and I was the sore loser.” Dash sighed. “You may not know this about me, Fen-twerp, but I was kind of a dick in high school.”

Fenton snorted.

“But this thing with the feds tonight—last night—seemed... I don’t know. A fitting way to call that favor. A secret for a secret.”

This seemed to unsettle Fenton. “My secret. First Kwan and Paulina and all your high school friends, now this complete stranger I’ve never even met, all sticking their necks out for me.”

“I told you, not for you. For _Phantom_. When I told Scott the feds’ ultimate goal is arresting Danny Phantom, he was totally onboard, just like Kwan and the rest. I knew they all would be. No one in this town is okay with the feds going after Phantom. They just aren’t. The guy saved the world. Well, I don’t have to tell you, since you helped save him.”

He shifted in his seat, uneasy. “You sure he wasn’t just afraid you’d out his brother if he didn’t do what you wanted?”

“Please. I said I _used_ to be a dick. I wouldn’t _blackmail_ the guy. Besides, the DADT repeal was signed a couple weeks after the whole debacle with my dad, and the day it went into effect the following year, Ty came out. On his own terms, like it should be. Scott did this to pay it _forward_ , not because he was worried about pay _back_ , okay?”

That seemed to put Fenton a little more at ease, although not completely. “What about your dad? After your ex came out, did your dad ever find out the truth? That you didn’t really do all those things you said you did, I mean?”

“Nah. What’s the point? I mean, the guy preferred having a son who was a teenage alcoholic over one who’s gay. It’s not like he’s gonna suddenly accept me because I’m not also a slut.”

Again, Fenton was quiet for a long time, like he was mulling something over. “There was a time when I didn’t want my parents to know the truth about me because what I was—what I _am_ —went against their entire worldview. I didn’t know _what_ they’d do to me when they found out. But when they did find out, they just... they changed their worldview. Just like that. For _me_.” His eyes met Dash’s, dark with emotion. “I don’t think I ever really appreciated how big a deal that was until right now.”

It was a provocative statement, that. Dash had no idea what secret Fenton could have had that would make him think his parents would hate him. Clearly he wasn’t gay—no one could fake being in love with a girl as much as Fenton was in love with Manson. Whatever it was, it must have something to do with why everyone was so freaked about him and the feds. But at the end of the day, his business was his business, and it wasn’t Dash’s place to press. Instead, he just nodded. “Your folks are pretty awesome.”

“Yes, they are.” Then, giving him a weird sort of searching look, he leaned back in his seat. “So, how much have you figured out?”

That question surprised Dash on the heels of the cryptic statement about his parents and whatever secret he was hiding, and Dash felt like he’d been caught butting his nose in where it didn’t belong, possibly putting his job at risk. “Uh... listen, Fenton. Don’t Ask Don’t Tell was a crap law for the military, but I think it works fine for FentonWorks. My job is to keep the feds out of your family’s business. I don’t need to know what that business is to do my job.”

“You saved my ass last night. I think that entitles you to a little ask and tell.” He spread out his hands in invitation. “So go ahead. Ask anything you want, and I’ll tell. I owe you that much. A secret for a secret, like you said.”

“You don’t owe me nothin’ but a paycheck. Besides, _you_ saved Danny Phantom’s ass. At least twice that I know of. I’m just returning the favor.”

“No, I didn’t. I saved a baby ghost who didn’t deserve to get shot like an animal. And last November? I saved some ghosts who got themselves captured because I screwed up. My family, my friends, they’re the ones who keep saving Danny Phantom. Not me. And now you’ve saved me. You’ve earned the right to know what from.”

He had to admit he was curious. But... “Your folks—”

“It’s not their call. It’s mine. Although...” he looked over his shoulder at the front door, as if expecting someone to walk in. “Who knows how early Sam’ll get here? And she has kittens anytime I wanna tell anyone the truth, so you’d better take me up on it before she gets here, because I may heal fast, but I’m not in any shape to go toe-to-toe with her right now.”

Dash chuckled. “You are _so_ whipped.”

“Yeah, pretty much. So, now’s your shot, before anyone can run interference. Don’t you wanna know what last night was really about?”


	14. Ask and Tell

Putting his feet down from the ottoman, Dash leaned forward, his curiosity overwhelming his better instincts to keep his nose out of his employers’ business. “Okay, yeah. I got a question for you. Why is everyone so protective of you? I mean, I get that the Guys in White suck and they’re the feds and have the whole weight of the US government behind them, but why are they so scared of you specifically getting caught?”

Fenton’s smile was cryptic as ever. “You told Kwan it was because I’d ‘squeal like a fangirl at a Justin Bieber concert.’”

Waving his hand, Dash brushed that away. “Eh. Had to tell him something.”

“Why didn’t you just tell him I’d been shot?”

“Because the whole point of this entire exercise was to get attention _off_ of you. Making you the hero? No _way_ that wouldn’t get out.”

Fenton tilted his head. “You know, you’re smarter than I ever gave you credit for in high school.”

“And you’re less of a wuss than I ever gave _you_ credit for. So, I asked, you said you’d tell. What gives? I thought I’d figured it out tonight, that it was all because you’d rescued Phantom, but like I said, that just didn’t justify the level of panic in your friends. Especially Manson. I didn’t think anything could scare that chick, but...” He didn’t want to say more than that, to share what he’d seen in his bathroom. That wasn’t fair to her.

Even not knowing the full extent of what his girlfriend had gone through the previous night, Fenton looked grave. “I know. She’s been afraid for me ever since the asteroid, really, when anti-ecto fears became part of national politics. It’s hard on her, because she’s a fighter by nature. She believes in making sacrifices to make the world a better place, but the government has a little too much power when it comes to ghosts, and she’s afraid she can’t change the world fast enough to save me.”

“Save you from _what_?”

“You really haven’t figured it out? You must have a theory, at least.”

Dash sat back in his seat and blew out a huff of air. “Paulina once got it into her head that Phantom was somehow connected to you. We always figured it was part because of the ghost portal in your folks’ basement and part her denial of those couple of days she went insane and was dating you freshman year.”

If he was insulted by the insanity crack, he didn’t show it. Instead, he looked like he’d had an epiphany of some sort. “You know, I never put those two things together like that before, but you may be onto something. Paulina’s _quinceañera_ wasn’t very long after that whole thing with Kitty. Maybe she left just enough behind for Paulina to connect some dots...”

“Huh?”

He shook his head. “Long story, ancient history. Continue.”

“Okaaaaay. Well, anyway, we all thought Paulina was full of crap, but lately I’ve been thinking maybe she wasn’t too far off the mark. Your mom and your sister talk a lot about ghosts having attachments, that that’s kind of what keeps them going, and you and Phantom do have the same first name. Is he, I don’t know, attached to you in some way? Like, is he some dead relative you were named after, or did he die in your bedroom or something? And can the feds get to him through you?”

“Close.” Fenton let out a long breath of air. “The truth is, there was an accident with my parents’ ghost portal when they first built it. I was fourteen at the time. Right at the start of freshman year.”

“An accident? So, he died in your folks’ ghost portal?” That thought creeped him out a little. He worked in that basement a lot.

“No. But in a way, he was sort of born there. See, the accident happened to _me_.”

“You?” Now Dash was really confused.

Fenton just nodded. “My parents had wired some stuff wrong and couldn’t get the thing to turn on. I had Tucker and Sam over one day and was showing off the portal, still shut down, and Sam kinda talked me into going into it and checking it out. So I did, and I accidentally turned it on—from the inside.”

Dash’s eyebrows shot up. “I’ve seen your dad’s inventions. That _can’t_ be good.”

“Not really, no. It was kind of like an explosion of ectoplasm. Hurt like _hell_. Way worse than that bullet did.”

“Are you serious? You were seriously in an _explosion_? Sounds like something you’d get sent to a burn ward for! How’d you not get completely maimed by something like that?”

“Ectoplasm is weird stuff. It’s unpredictable. It didn’t really injure me—well, unless you count a mild concussion.”

“Okay, but what does this have to do with Danny—” And then, it was like all his childhood comic books came to life in his head, and all the air rushed out of his lungs. “ _Jesus_. That... that’s an _origin story_.”

Fenton didn’t answer, and Dash leaned over even further. “ _You? You’re_ — You’d better not be messing with me...”

He held up his right hand like he was taking an oath. “God’s honest truth. Normally, I’d give you the whole ghost and pony show, but whatever they coated that bullet with really did do a number on my ghost powers.” He grinned. “Kinda like when my dad accidentally shrunk us with that Fenton Crammer. Got my powers knocked out then, too. Remember?”

“ _You_...” Dash shook his head, trying to reorient himself to make sense of Danny _Fenton_ talking in the first person about an experience he’d once shared with Danny _Phantom_.

“I can probably manage something small, though.” And then, he vanished. Dash nearly toppled out of the chair, but seconds later, Fenton was back, sitting on the couch in his pajamas as if it were absolutely the most normal thing in the world to become invisible.

And suddenly, everything made sense. The way they all circled the wagons whenever the Guys in White were around. How Fenton seemed to know more about ghosts and the Ghost Zone than even his parents, despite the fact that Dash rarely actually saw him out ghost hunting with the others. The way his mother had gone chalk white when they’d said they’d shot Danny Phantom. Fenton with the bullet in his arm. Manson, sobbing in Dash’s bathroom. _They will make you disappear..._

“Danny Fen-turd is Danny _Phan_ -turd?” Dash frowned. “Whoa. Déjà vu.” He shook his head more vigorously this time. “So, are you saying you... you _died_ in that accident, and now you’re a—”

“I’m not dead, no. We’re not really sure what exactly happened. The ectoplasm explosion changed my DNA, but we’re not sure how. My mom’s been working on it ever since she found out the truth, but she doesn’t really have any answers.”

“But if you’re not, you know... _dead_ , how... what... what _are_ you? Are you even _human_?”

“Yeah, I’m still human. Partially, anyway. I call myself a half ghost. My mom calls me a hybrid. Some of the ghosts used to call me a ‘halfa,’ but now they mostly call me ‘Ghost Child’ or ‘Whelp’ or whatever.”

“Wait. The _ghosts_ know? I thought the whole secret identity thing was to keep your enemies from coming after your loved ones.”

Fenton rolled his eyes. “Not in this case. They’ve always known. They can sense it. Mostly the secret identity thing is because of the Guys in White and the anti-ecto laws. And at one time, my parents. They _really_ hated ghosts before they found out.”

“How can you be both? How does that even _work_ , with the white hair and the... the... flying? Wait. You can _fly?_ How cool is _that_?”

“Pretty cool, I gotta admit. Like I said, I can’t really give you the whole show until I heal up from whatever they shot me with. But basically, I can change forms back and forth between ghost and human. The hair goes white and the eyes turn green when I go ghost. And my clothes change, too, for some weird reason no one has been able to figure out yet. And believe me, my mom has tried. Whatever I’m wearing just disappears, and I end up in that jumpsuit, which is a photo-negative version of the hazmat suit I was wearing when the accident happened. When I change back, the clothes I was last wearing as a human come back.”

“What, like Wonder Woman?”

“Uh... not exactly the superhero I’d choose to compare myself to, but more or less. Without the spinning, though.”

Dash squinted, studying Fenton in this whole new light. “You know, you do kind of look like him.” For the third time, he shook his head. “I feel like an _idiot_. How did I miss this?”

Fenton—Phantom?—shrugged. “No one ever thinks ‘secret identity.’ I think it’s because everyone assumes a ghost is dead and a human is living, so it just doesn’t occur to anyone that they could be the same thing. After Vlad—you remember Vlad Masters, the mayor before Tucker, who turned out to be a ghost? He was a half ghost, too. After he revealed himself, I thought people who knew me would start putting it together, but even then, they didn’t. They just assumed Vlad was impersonating a human. Even my parents had trouble wrapping their minds around the concept of a half ghost. All those years studying ghosts, and this just contradicted everything they thought they knew.”

“And that’s why the feds said they shot Danny Phantom, but you were the one with the bullet in your shoulder.” Then, another thought occurred to him. “Wait. Don’t tell me the Ghost Hunter girl is your _girlfriend_.”

“Uh... there are two ways to take that question, and the answer to both of them is a resounding _no_. But that’s all I’m saying. Not my tale to tell.”

Another bolt of realization hit Dash. “ _Valerie_. _She’s_ the Ghost Hunter! That’s how she could get all the way from her place in midtown to Manson’s place downtown, then back to my apartment in under twenty minutes!” Fenton didn’t respond, but he didn’t need to. Dash knew he was right.

A million new questions formed on the heels of that revelation—how did a girl he once hung out with in high school but ditched because her father went bankrupt end up with such wicked awesome ghost-hunting gear, including a _jet sled_? But Fenton had already said it wasn’t his tale to tell, so Dash focused instead on the old questions this new knowledge answered.

“And that’s why the feds thought there were only two other human accomplices, too. If you’re Phantom and Valerie’s the Hunter, that leaves Foley and Manson. Geez, now everything makes sense. Except...” His brow furrowed. “What about your cousin?”

He stiffened like Dash had just threatened to kick his puppy. “What about her?”

“That. Everyone’s almost as protective of her as they are of you. What’s the story there?”

It took him a moment to answer. “She’s a half ghost, too. Only she... ugh. It’s a really long story. Short version: Vlad made her his special project, gave her ghost powers, then pretty much poisoned them out of her. How I am right now, able to use small bursts of ghost power but not go fully ghost? That’s her all the time. And that’s really all I wanna say on that subject. You proved last night I can trust you with my life, but I don’t really trust _anyone_ with hers, not after everything Vlad put her through. So let’s just leave it at that.”

Dash nodded. “Sure. Sorry, didn’t mean to get too personal.”

Sighing, Fenton relaxed again. “No, it’s fine. I’m the one who said you could ask anything.” He cocked his head, giving Dash another thoughtful look. “And I do trust you, you know. Not just because of everything you did for me, but because of what you said earlier, about having to decide when it’s time to hide and when it’s time to come out, and that there are sacrifices either way. I think you really get that in a way my family and friends don’t. Especially Sam.”

This, at least, was familiar ground for Dash. “They only see the dangers of coming out. They don’t see what staying in the closet costs you.”

Fenton nodded. “That and... you said when it’s time to come out, you’d have my back. Sam—well, all of them, really, but especially her—I don’t think they really get that that day _will_ come. Hopefully not soon. But someday. And as likely as not, before the laws change.”

Suddenly, Dash could see the full weight of all he was carrying on him. What Dash had gone through coming out to his dad ranked as one of the worst experiences of his life, but when Fenton came out—well, Dash’s dad’s reaction would look affirming in comparison. But the weight of having to keep everything he was under wraps to avoid those consequences was harder than most people understood. That was a weight Dash knew all too well. “Living in the closet is hard.”

“Yeah, but so’s living in a fishbowl. I don’t really want that, either.”

“See, now, I was looking forward to living in the fishbowl. NFL first round draft pick, Nike Dash shoes, the works.”

Fenton regarded him a moment. “Would you have come out if you hadn’t lost your shot at all that?”

“Not when I did, no. Notre Dame’s a Catholic school, and the bishops have been under pressure to take a hard line on social issues. No telling what they’d have done with my scholarship if they’d have known.”

“How ’bout in the NFL?”

“Maybe. Hard to tell. Things are opening up now. DADT’s gone, DOMA—Defense of Marriage Act—is under fire. Lotta vocal allies in the NFL. It’s not anything like your situation. Another year or two, when I would’ve been drafted, who knows?”

“But you said you don’t regret coming out, that it was the right thing at the time. Would you trade that, being free of hiding who you are all the time, to get back that life you’d planned?”

Dash looked down at his hands in his lap. “You know, I don’t really know. A year ago, yeah, in a heartbeat. Hell, maybe even a few months ago. But now? I don’t know. I kinda like how things are now, you know? I’m broke, I live in a basement, and I schlep crazy-ass ghost-hunting equipment for a crazy-ass boss, but... it’s a good place to be. It’s good to be around a family where everyone’s got each other’s back and you don’t have to be something you’re not. And I get to help people that do big things.” His eyes met Fenton’s. “ _You_ do big things. Even if it’s not always saving the world or saving the town, but it’s just saving one little kid ghost. That’s a cool thing to be a part of, even in a sort of sideline way.”

“Definitely not a sideline way, especially not last night. You know, when you first applied for the job, I couldn’t imagine anything crazier than you working here. But I’m really glad my dad hired you. It’s good having you on the team.” He snorted. “Beats the hell out of you wailing on me, anyway.”

Dash sat up straight as it hit him. “Holy crap! I spent most of high school beating up _Danny Phantom_. You could have _flattened_ me. Why didn’t you?”

“Because any time I did get a few licks in, Sam got on my case. Using my powers for the greater good, blah blah blah.” He made a sock-puppet-talking motion with his hand. Then, he gave Dash a wistful smile. “Of course, she was right.”

Rolling his eyes, Dash flopped back in his seat. “Here, I was all admiring you for not giving me what I deserved, and then you go and remind me how _totally whipped_ you are.”

“Oh, you’re laughing now, but just wait. As soon as she finds out I told you who I am, she’s gonna threaten you within an inch of your life if you tell anyone, and you’ll be crying like a little girl. She is _not_ happy when new people find out.”

The image of strong, caustic, combative Sam Manson wrapped in a ball, sobbing on his bathroom floor killed any desire Dash had to fire off another shot in response. Instead, he just nodded. “I’ll bet. So, who all knows?”

“Sam and Tucker, of course. My family. Val, her dad, and Mr. Lancer found out along with about eighty other people in Antarctica during the asteroid thing, but somehow word hasn’t managed to leak yet. Tucker’s and Sam’s families—boy, was telling Sam’s parents _ugly_. Her grandma was cool, though. Jazz told Nick when they came after me last November. And now you.” Now it was his turn to shake his head. “Who’da thought, you and me, friends, trading confidences? How the hell did we get here?”

“I was asking myself the same question earlier, actually.”

“Did you ever figure out the answer?”

“Pretty much by accident, I guess. Me accidentally ending up under the entire USC defensive line, you accidentally ending up in an exploding ghost portal.” Smiling, he raised his hand as if holding an invisible glass. “To accidents.”

Fenton mimicked the imaginary toast. “To accidents. And no regrets?”

“Nope.” Dash looked around him at the strange house which suddenly felt less like a place he worked and more like home. “Not a one.”

_-THE END-_


End file.
